SBI’s Sriram To Take Additional Charge As IDBI Bank Chief For Three Months

B Sriram, managing director at State Bank of India, was today given additional charge of heading IDBI Bank for a “temporary” period of three months. It’s not clear how a banker would hold dual charge at two different banks.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the proposal of the Department of Financial Services to move Sriram to his new position. He will take over as the managing director and chief executive officer of the stressed IDBI Bank after its current CEO MK Jain demits office.

Jain was appointed as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India earlier this month – a position that had remained vacant since August 2017.

Sriram currently manages SBI’s corporate banking division with a loan book exceeding Rs 10 lakh crore as on March 31, 2018. This includes the bank’s mid and large corporate, and small and medium enterprise lending business.

IDBI Bank has been facing severe stress owing to a nearly 28 percent gross non-performing asset ratio as of March. It’s also under the RBI’s prompt corrective action and faces restrictions on lending to risky borrowers. The bank is currently in the midst of selling over Rs 20,000 crore worth stressed loans, monetising its non-core assets and reducing its dependence on corporate lending, which constitutes more than half of its loan book.