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Four SBI Managing Directors Interviewed For Chairman’s Post 

Who will take over after current SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya steps down?



People walk through a State Bank of India branch in Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Bloomberg News)
People walk through a State Bank of India branch in Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Bloomberg News)
  • Banks Board Bureau interviewed four candidates for the SBI chairman’s post, which will fall vacant after the retirement of Arundhati Bhattacharya in October.
  • B Sriram, the bank’s senior most managing director, Rajnish Kumar, PK Gupta and Dinesh Kumar Khara faced the panel.
  • Bhattacharya will complete her four-year term as the chairperson of SBI on October 6.

The Banks Board Bureau (BBB) headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Thursday interviewed four candidates for the SBI chairman's post, which will fall vacant after the retirement of Arundhati Bhattacharya in October.

The four SBI managing directors were interviewed by three sub-committees under the BBB, people familiar with the development told PTI.

B Sriram, the bank's senior most managing director, along with three others Rajnish Kumar, PK Gupta and Dinesh Kumar Khara faced the panel, the people said.

Of these four, PK Gupta and Dinesh Kumar Khara have relatively higher tenure left in the bank, while both Rajnish Kumar and Sriram's retirement is due in 2018.

Four SBI Managing Directors Interviewed For Chairman’s Post 

Bhattacharya will complete her four-year term as the chairperson of SBI on October 6.

Appointed in 2013, as the bank’s first female chairperson, she got one-year extension in October 2016 as SBI was to merge its associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself.

The SBI's chairman post now assumes more significance as the bank's merger with six other entities has taken it into the league of top 50 banks globally in terms of assets.

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), besides Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB), merged with SBI with effect from April 1. The process of integration would at least take a year.

For the fourth quarter ended March 2017, the bank’s net profit more than doubled on increased lending and reduction in provisioning for bad loans. Net profit on standalone basis rose to Rs 2,814.82 crore for the March quarter as against Rs 1,263.81 crore in the same period of previous fiscal 2015-16. For the year-ended March 2017, the bottomline improved by 5.36 percent to Rs 10,484 crore as against Rs 9,951 crore in the previous fiscal.