The month of December seems to be a season of appointments for the finance ministry. Not only the ministry will decide whether capital market regulator will get a new chief or the incumbent CB Bhave will get another two year extension on December 18, it will also conduct the final interview for selecting a new chairman for State Bank of India (SBI) on December 16.
SBI chairman OP Bhatt will retire in March 2011. The ministry has called all the four deputy managing directors (DMDs)?Hemant Contractor, Pratip Cahudhuri, Diwakar Gupta, A Krishan Kumar? for the interview on December 16. Out of the four DMDs, Contractor and Chaudhuri are awaiting final clearance from the Prime Minister Office (PMO) to be elevated as managing directors (MD). Also, Gupta and Krishna Kumar have already appeared for the interview to select the third MD.
Traditionally, SBI has two managing directors. However, one of the posts has been vacant ever since S Bhattacharya retired in October 2010. After the recent amendment to the SBI Act the government can appoint four MDs. The fourth MD will be appointed after R Sridharan will retire in June 2011. The government has also started a fresh move to fill up the expected seven vacancies in the state-owned banks which will fall vacant in fiscal year 2011-12. As a preliminary step, the ministry of finance has asked all the 23 executive directors (EDs), working in various banks, to submit their details to it.
A similar effort has also been initiated to find out the persons to be appointed as EDs, after these EDs are promoted as as CMDs.
Sources said that 13 vacancies for EDs would be filled up by the government in the next year and nearly 30 serving GMs have been asked to send their details for filling up these posts. Among the CMDs who ?would be retiring in FY 2011-12 include MV Nair (Union Bank), S Sridhar (Central Bank), Ramnath Pradeep (Corporation Bank), R Ramachandran (Andhra Bank), DL Rawal (Dena Bank), AS Bhattacharya (Bank of Maharashtra) and Basant Seth (Syndicate Bank).
Interestingly, the government may also consider those general managers (GMs) that couldn?t make it during the last time as they had already appeared for the interview (for selecting EDs) consecutively in last three years though in vain, said the source.
Also, the existing norms prescribe only those serving Eds, who have completed at least one year in their current position and have a residual service of minimum of two years can be considered for the CMD post.
Going by this norm, there are nine eligible candidates for the posts of CMDs. However, in case the criteria is relaxed, as was done in certain cases during last exercise to appoint CMDs, then several other candidates will join the list of probable names. Meanwhile, the government is likely to appoint BS Bains, Punjab cadre IAS officer, as the CMD of Punjab & Sindh Bank. The government is yet to select chiefs for Nabard and SIDBI for which interviews are already over.