The appalling record of incompetence, and likely worse, by India’s credit rating agencies (CRAs) continues to lengthen. The latest instance is the double default of commercial debt obligations (on June 27 and July 1, 2019) by Cox and Kings, a tour and travels services company. In this case the...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. HDFC Bank, India’s largest bank by market capitalisation appears to be the first off the block in demanding resignations from permanent staff at its non-bank finance company (NBFC) subsidiary, HDB Financial Services (HDB FS). While times are indeed difficult, stakeholders in the bank should note the manner...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The credit rating agency, ICRA (an affiliate of Moody’s) has finally sacked Naresh Takkar, its chief executive officer (CEO). This appears to be a belated response to pressure from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the capital markets regulator. Earlier, following an anonymous complaint to SEBI, reportedly...
Private sector banks’ high and sharply rising attrition is in the spotlight, thanks to the mandatory disclosures in banks’ annual and business sustainability reports since FY2023. However, inter-bank comparison may not be an accurate indicator of the attrition in a particular bank, as some large banks use unlisted subsidiaries...
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. A newly-appointed (on October 9, 2020) deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed, for discussion, that large systemically-important non-bank finance companies (NBFCs) either convert themselves into banks, or that they contract assets, in order to protect financial stability. This proposal not only has...
One might think that the ICICI Bank board, worried at the beating its image has taken in recent months, might try to restore public confidence by selecting an impeccable stand-in for its CEO-under-investigation. But, true to form, the board has selected a gentleman in whose tenure as CEO, ICICI...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The IDFC’s board of directors’ decision to reclassify Vinod Rai, hitherto independent director, as a non-independent non-executive director provides a backdoor entry for all those independent directors whom founders/promoters and executive management want to retain after the mandated two consecutive terms.
In the critical financial sector there is...
Vietnamese ingenuity, in leveraging popular support to liberate their country and abandoning conventional military doctrines, paved the way for a historic victory over French colonialism.
08/MAY/2020
On May 7-8, 1954, a huge garrison of the French Army surrendered to the Vietnamese Peoples’ Army at Dien Bien Phu, a remote mountain valley in...
India’s private sector banks were held up for years as the standard of efficency and corporate governance to which public sector banks should aspire. But now it emerges that private bank after private bank has in fact been harbouring bad debts, fudged accounts, corrupt deals, gross mismanagement, overly paid CEOs and...
