The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved the appointment of Salee Sukumaran Nair as the managing director and chief executive officer of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB), for a period of three years.

Nair retired from SBI in May where he last served as deputy managing director and chief credit officer.

Nair replaces S Krishnan who resigned as MD and CEO in September last year, citing personal reasons. Just a week before his resignation, the Tamil Nadu-based bank had wrongly credited Rs 9,000 crore to a Chennai cab driver. Krishnan wasasked to continue till a replacement was found.

Nair’s appointment will now need approval from the shareholders of the bank. He is expected to take up his new role by the first week of September.

A postgraduate in applied electronics, Nair started his banking career as a probationary officer in 1987. In a career spanning more than 35 years, he has handled various assignments, mostly in the corporate accounts group handling large corporates. He also had two assignments in the international banking group of SBI, first in New York, USA, and later heading the Australian operations based in Sydney. He also managed branches in Rajasthan and Western Uttar Pradesh and was involved in the merger of State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur with SBI. 

He took over as chief general manager in the stressed asset vertical of SBI from July 2017 and was promoted as DMD in April 2020, a position he held until September 2021. 

In his term in the stressed assets resolution group of SBI, he oversaw the reduction of peak non-performing assets (NPA) from 10.96% to 4.90%.

Subsequently, he took over as DMD in charge of the SME, agriculture and financial inclusion vertical from September 2021 to July 2022.