'ICICI evokes the worst perception, criticism'

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Mumbai, October 2: : ICICI Bank always evoked adverse perception and undue criticism for its growth strategy, but its defence would be performance rather than the government protection by being a public sector entity, CEO and Managing Director K V Kamath has said.

"I have no regrets...in fact I would not have been able to do what I have done with ICICI Bank without wearing this (private sector) hat," Kamath said in an interview on whether he missed protection of being a public sector bank.

"I don't think we put a foot wrong. We got capital first, got people and are now reasonably leveraged. We have always suffered from the worst perception," said Kamath, who resolved to fight the market manipulators trying to destabilise the bank.

Though the Bank faced numerous challenges in growing its strategy, but having to defend the concerted attack is the "biggest challenge".

Fighting rumours that cast doubts on the Bank's financial strength which brought down the stock to two-year low of Rs 493 a share, Kamath said "in India I have not seen any parallel at least in the last ten years".

"Whenever we launched a new initiative, we have been criticised but all our initiatives have succeeded. Some of our initiatives have been pioneering and this (criticism) is a challenge for a pioneer," he said.

"In the earlier years, there was scepticism and a different point of view about our strategy, but now there is a concerted attack with an intent to destabilise the bank," Kamath said.

The bank's strategy to diversify was taken about 10 years ago and people said it was wrong, Kamath said. "(But) we built up our retail portfolio and today we are a strong player in this segment," Kamath said.

At present, the bank was going slow in some retail segments and again people are saying it is wrong, he said. But the bank had its strategies right and was going ahead with its plans, undeterred by such criticism.

"When we went global, people again pointed fingers at us but we succeeded. Our next strategy was to tap rural India. It was a challenging task and again people said we were wrong. But without rural India, there is no India," Kamath said. ICICI Bank, being a pioneer, took such challenges in its stride, he said.