Yes Bank Picks Deutsche India's Ravneet Gill As Rana Kapoor’s Successor

Mumbai, January 24: Private sector lender Yes Bank Thursday named Ravneet Singh Gill, currently heading Deutsche Bank India, as the managing director and chief executive to succeed Rana Kapoor, whose term ends on January 31.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had last September asked Kapoor, who is one of the promoters of the city-based lender along with his sister-in-law Bindu Kapur, to leave the office by the end of this month.

"The bank has received Reserve Bank approval for new managing director and chief executive Ravneet Gill. He can join on or before March 1, 2019," Yes Bank said in a statement.

It further said the board will meet on January 29 to finalise the interim transition.

The announcement sent the Yes Bank counter rallying by over 14.5 percent to close at Rs 225.95 on the BSE whose benchmark closed the day with around 0.24 percent  gains in a choppy trade.

It can be noted that after the RBI move, the bank shares had lost more than two-thirds of its value. Even after today's rally, the stock is almost 40 percent below its 52-week high.

Though the RBI had not cited any specific reasons while not accepting a new three-year term for Kapoor and asked him leave latest by January 31, it is attributed to under-reporting of bad loans for two years by the bank under Kapoor's watch.

Yes Bank, along with its larger rival Axis Bank, were found to have under-reported its stock of non- performing assets by a cumulative Rs 10,000 crore each for two consecutive fiscals.

The RBI drove a management change at Axis Bank as well and Shikha Sharma had left the bank by the end of last month.

After the RBI cut-short his term, the Yes Bank board made second request to the RBI to extend his term to March 2020. But that was also rejected by the monetary authority leading the appointment of a search panel.

Following the RBI refusal to extend Kapoor's term, the bank had appointed a committee under former Irdai chairman TS Vijayan to look for a successor to Kapoor.

Even the search panel had some resignations including former bureaucrat and the bank's non-executive chairman Ashok Chawla leaving the post in a hurry after being named in graft case by the CBI. Former SBI chairman OP Bhatt had also left the search panel mid-way.