Legendary Indian banker Narayanan Vaghul, the recipient of the Padma Bhushan award in 2009, has passed away, according to people in know of the matter. Narayanan Vaghul was on ventilator support at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, with his health being in a critical condition.
He was declared dead today at 12:38 pm, people who are aware of the matter, told FinancialExpress.com. However, there has been no official announcement on the same.
According to sources, respects will be paid at his residence between 5 pm and 8 pm this evening at Mezzanine Hall, Bonaventura Apartments, South Canal Bank Road, Chennai. He is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
Narayanan Vaghul was the youngest head of a bank when he took over as chairman of Bank of India at the age of 44 in the year 1981. Narayanan Vaghul, 88, started his career in State Bank of India. When he was 39, he became the executive director of Central Bank of India. When Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was made aware of Vaghul’s talents, he got him into ICICI.
In 2023, Narayanan Vaghul had released his memoir, called ‘Reflections’ which carried a vivid account of his experiences spanning several decades in India’s financial sector. His book has a very refreshing format of story-telling—a series of anecdotes about his colleagues, politicians, bureaucrats and clients. Narayanan Vaghul has always been humble and this was evident from the book’s foreword itself. He wrote that he never imagined that his habit of making light-hearted conversation during the course of board meetings and afterwards at lunch would land him in the ‘trouble’ of writing the book. “Even during my days at ICICI—when my colleagues used to flatter me saying they would not want to miss a single lunch that I was present for —I believed that their words were more inspired by my position rather than by the liveliness of my conversation.”