Mehta's appointment comes along with the elavation of former incumbent, David Eldon, as HongkongBank's chairman. Eldon suceeds John Strickland, who retires at the end of December.

Mehta graduated from the Delhi University with an economics degree in 1967 and joined the Mumbai office of Mercantile Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of HongkongBank Plc. He held a number of senior positions in operations, credit, branch, area-management and merchant banking. In 1985, Mehta was appointed manager-corporate planning in HongKongBank, and in 1998 became the managing director of the Saudi British Bank.

In January 1993, Mehta became chairman and chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings, theNew York-based arm of HSBC Holdings Plc, before being appointed deputy chairman of the British Bank (Middle East) in November 1995.

Mehta follows in the footsteps of Rana Talwar (50), a graduate in economics from New Delhi's St Stephen's College, who took over as Standard Chartered Bank's group chief executive officer, effective 1 October. Both Mehta and Talwar grew from the ranks. While Mehta did so in HongkongBank, Talwar did likewise in Citibank before moving to Standard Chartered Bank.

Other eminent Indians who are currently heading multinational organisations are Mckinsey Worldwide's Rajat Gupta and Arthur Andersen's Jim Wadia.