Private sector lender HDFC Bank Ltd. has reconstituted the search panel set up to find a successor to Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Aditya Puri.
Keki Mistry has been replaced by Renu Karnad, joint managing director of Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd., in the search panel as his eight-year tenure as a director on the bank’s board ended in January, HDFC Bank said in an exchange filing. Karnad has been appointed as additional non-executive director—nominee of promoter HDFC—on the board of the bank.
Puri will continue to act as adviser to the search committee, the filing stated.
The other members of the panel include HDFC Bank Chairman Shyamala Gopinath, Sanjiv Sachar, MD Ranganath, Sandeep Parekh and Srikanth Nadhamuni.
India’s largest private lender had on Nov. 28, 2019, set up a six-member panel to find a successor to Puri. Weeks into the appointment of the search panel, the bank hired international headhunting firm Egon Zehnder to assist the panel in identifying the right candidate.
Puri, who built HDFC Bank from scratch in 1994 to a Rs 6.3 lakh crore entity now, is the highest paid banker in the country. He is retiring on Oct. 26, 2020, as he turns 70 on that day.
The process to find his successor is being keenly watched by India’s banking industry. Speculation is intense on whether the bank will pick an internal or external candidate. HDFC Bank’s Deputy MD Paresh Sukthankar was considered a frontrunner to replace him, but he resigned last year.
At the annual general meeting in 2019, Puri had said that his replacement should be better than him and should not require 18 months of handholding for the job.
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