Thursday, June 14, 2018

Bank CEOs - The Difficulty of being "Above Board"

Banks in India have been under the scanner for some time now. First it was the infamous Non-Performing Assets (an euphemism for loans that had gone sour) largely in State Owned Banks; then it was the fraudulent transactions with collusion from bank officials, prominent among such instances being the Nirav Modi heist running in to several thousand crores of rupees; then on to conflict of interest instances where close relatives of banks benefiting from their proximity to the top management in the banks, such as instance in the case of ICICI Bank.

Where does all this leave the CEO of the concerned bank? Why is a CEO's behaviour so important compared to that of others in the same entity? I examine these issues in a recent article, first published in BloombergQuint on 13 June 2018, available here.