Kotak Mahindra Bank has made some key leadership changes, the first after Ashok Vaswani took charge as the managing director and CEO of the private lender.

K V S Manian has been elevated as joint managing director and Shanti Ekambaram is made the deputy managing director.

Incidentally, there were reports of Manian being among the three shortlisted for the CEO’s post at Federal Bank.

Both Manian and Ekambaram have been associated with the group for a long and are whole-time directors.

Manian will take up his new role with effect from 1 March. He will spearhead growth of wholesale, commercial and private banking, along with asset reconstruction division and wholesale credit. He will continue to have oversight over the institutional equities and investment banking businesses of the group.

As the new deputy MD, Ekambaram will continue to drive the growth of banking app 811, treasury and global markets businesses. She will oversee human resources, group marketing and corporate communications, internal vigilance, internal audit (administrative matters), public affairs, corporate social responsibility and ESG. 

She will continue to have oversight over Kotak Mahindra Financial Services and Kotak Karma subsidiaries.

The other appointments include Devang Gheewalla succeeding Jaimin Bhatt as the group chief financial officer with effect from 1 April. Bhatt is superannuating on 31 March.

Milind Nagnur has been elevated as chief operating officer from 1 April. He will continue to be the chief technology officer and take additional responsibility for bank operations, group technology architecture and cyber security functions.

In his new role, he will be responsible for building the critical enablers that will fuel the bank’s aspirations for scale.

Paul Parambi has been elevated as the group chief risk officer effective 1 March, thereby extending his role from the bank to all group companies.

Last November, the bank’s founder and vice-chairman Uday Kotak announced his resignation from executive positions at the bank effective end-December, which though was much before his RBI-mandated retirement, citing personal reasons.