Banks are considered special, but Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) and its high profile founder-CEO, Uday Kotak are extraordinarily special (here and here). Ever since KMB was granted a banking license in 2003, Uday Kotak has been its CEO. As per the Reserve Bank of India’s directive, he will have...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The Indian prime minister’s announcement that India had destroyed a ‘low-earth orbit’ satellite with a missile, and thus joined an elite club, suggests that the ruling party is desperate to deflect the voters’ attention from the dire economic situation in India. This desperation points to a reality...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The sharp slowdown in the Indian economy and the wide publicity to the production cutbacks and layoffs in the automobile sector have cast the spotlight on the retail sector of banking. The business model of HDFC Bank, India’s largest bank by market capitalization, is firmly wrapped around...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. ICICI Bank’s 1QFY2022 results on July 24, 2021 highlight the need for shareholders to re-examine the bank’s retail asset strategy. ICICI Bank’s strategy was to focus on retail assets to compensate for the bulky poor-quality corporate assets that it had earlier emphasised. However, the broad economic slowdown...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Xmas festivities were disrupted when RBL Bank dropped a bombshell on the stock exchanges. It informed the public that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under Section 36AB of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, had appointed Yogesh K Dayal (Chief General Manager, RBI) as an additional director....
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The integrity of audits in private sector banks and non-bank financial companies (including housing finance) has received a major boost, while large global and domestic audit firms have been dealt a body blow by the Reserve Bank of India’s new guidelines for the appointment of statutory auditors...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. In comparing a company’s stand-alone expenses with its consolidated accounts, it is highly unusual for the consolidated numbers to be lower than the stand-alone numbers. But what has gone unnoticed for some years in HDFC Bank is that its stand-alone ‘other operating expenses’ has been consistently higher...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For the beleaguered non-bank finance company (NBFC) sector, banks are the single largest component of external funding. This source peaked at the end of September 2018, in the aftermath of the default of IL&FS, a private unlisted infrastructure developer and financer. However, in the beginning of the last...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Since 2QFY2019, the stock market has been kind to ICICI Bank. It has rewarded the bank with a consistent rise in the share price and an equally consistent re-rating in its P/BV. With such a strong performance in the share price, the sell-side has bent backwards to...
Directors’ role on company boards has become more complex and demanding, especially for independent directors. Increasingly they have to monitor and manage diverse stakeholders’ interest, instead of being primarily focused on protecting shareholders‘ interests and expectations. With regard to banks, this was borne out when an independent director of...
