TS Vijayan, OP Bhatt to lead panel made for deciding Yes Bank's CEO

Former chairman of insurance watchdog Irdai, TS Vijayan, and retired SBI chief OP Bhatt will be part of the panel which will choose Yes Bank's chief executive officer after Rana Kapoor's exit. 

The five-member panel will also consist of board members Brahm Dutt, Lt Gen (Retd) Mukesh Sabharwal and SC Kalia, the bank said in a regulatory filing Friday evening. 

Vijayan and Bhatt will be the external experts on the panel, which had to be specially constituted after the Reserve Bank of India curtailed Kapoor's term as the managing director and chief executive by over two years. 

Vijayan was a career LIC hand who rose to be the chairman of the life insurance behemoth and served as the chief of Irdai. 

Bhatt rose through the ranks at the country's largest lender SBI and is widely credited for transforming the state-run lender. The five-member panel will have its first meeting on October 11, the bank said, adding that it will be assisted by a global leadership advisory firm. 

The panel will be evaluating both internal and external candidates for the corner office at the midsize private sector lender. The bank has elevated senior presidents Rajat Monga and Pralay Mandal to the role of executive directors, following receipt of the RBI communique curtailing Kapoor's term. 

In a call with analysts earlier this week, Monga had reportedly said that the bank will finalise a successor by end of January. It can be noted that the bank scrip had witnessed a massive 40 per cent decline in its value. 

In the past few sessions, it has regained some of the lost ground after the bank partly revealed its second-quarter business performance in advance. In the face of RBI's action, the bank had said that it will be seeking an eight-month extension beyond the curtailed down period till January 31, 2019, for Kapoor. 

Even as his co-promoters in the bank sold their holding, Kapoor asserted that he will not sell his shares and ask his children not to sell the inherited shares either. 

The 61-year-old Kapoor's term was curtailed due to as yet unspecified reasons by the RBI. 

Private bank chieftains are allowed to continue till 70 years. Kapoor is the second private sector bank head after Axis Bank's Shikha Sharma to see a curtailment of the term. 

Both the lenders were found to have underreported their NPAs by over Rs 10,000 crore each for two consecutive years by the RBI.

(With inputs from agencies.)