As many as seven public sectors banks are working without Executive Directors at present. The Union government is also in no hurry to complete the process of appointment of the seven Executive Directors who have already been selected through the process of interviews conducted on January 9, 2007. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also given his consent for the appointment of seven Eds.

Now, this is being said that some of the selected candidates have strong support in political circle and now they want to change their postings want to change their postings. Due to the new requests with such strong political backing, the banking department is delaying the process of final appointments.

According to the report, Dena Bank, United Bank of India and Allahabad Bank are still working without any ED. A CMD of a public sector bank said that unavailability of top officers affects the working of a bank.

According to him, the government should come out with a formula to continue the same management in a bank for a long time. Private sector banks such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank have shown improvement in past some years because of the same top management for a longer period.

He said:

KV Kamath and PJ Nayak are working with ICICI Bank and Axis Bank respectively for more than seven years. This is reflected in share prices of these banks.

In the year 2007, as many as 17 EDs will retire and the banking department had started the selection process for the same posts way back in September 2006. Among the 90 General Managers in PSU banks, who have showed interests in the post of ED, 17 were selected after the interviews conducted on January 8 and 9 this year.

Out of 17 candidates, eight were posted on June 6 and for remaining nominees, the process was initiated on June 22, 2007. On October 11, the PM had also given the consent to the posting. Still the process of final posting has not yet completed because some candidates actually wanted to shift their postings. The report further said that if the government accepts requests of some selected candidates to change their postings, the process would take another two months to complete the process.

Read