Bhatt hangs up boots as SBI chief

As OP Bhatt hangs up his boots today after a five-year innings at the helm of affairs of country's biggest lender State Bank of India (SBI), he has reasons to feel proud -- the bank's net profit rose to its peak at Rs 11,734 crore.

Bhatt's indelible legacy would be his special home loan rates or teaser rates, which helped SBI dislodge HDFC from its No 1 position in mortgage market, but invited sharp criticism from peers as well as regulator RBI.

While SBI's net profit rose to Rs 11,734 crore in March 2010 from Rs 5,530 crore in March 2006, its market capitalisation stood at Rs 1,17,883 crore as of March 2011 against Rs 47,935 crore in January 2006.

During his five-year tenancy at the corner room on the 18th floor at SBI Bhavan in Mumbai, the assets of the bank more than doubled to Rs 14,51,220 crore (as of March 2010) from Rs 6,96,992 crore in March 2006.

From a non-descript Bhattgaon village in Uttarakhand to the top position in the country's biggest bank, Bhatt's humble journey proves that state-run banks too can churn outstanding leaders. Bhatt proved success is not the prerogative of those with aggression written on their temples and having B-school degrees.

During his stint, loans and deposits grew more than five-fold as he spread the blue and green branding of SBI ATM to remote locations at a time when other state-run banks had a sedate growth and private banks were crippled by the credit crisis.

Today, State Bank Group is the undisputed leader in the banking space with a 25% of the market share. Bhatt had the courage of conviction on his special home loan product to stand up to severe criticism of teaser rates.

He walked with elan on a terrain that has seen many stalwarts falling apart even as he differed time and again with regulator RBI. He even went to the extent of saying that the central bank had not understood his product at all.

Bhatt, in fact, sounded a different note from that of the regulator on a variety of issues -- from teaser loans to deregulation of interest rate on saving accounts to provisioning for bad loans, among others.

Some of the most notable trans-formative achievements of Bhatt's are the Rs 20,000-crore rights issue for which he secured all the necessary permission and which will happen in the next quarter. The employee stock purchase scheme that no other PSU bank had ventured into was another key achievement.

Another was the maiden retail bond issue from a bank, which had a whopping 19 times subscription in October 2010, and six times for the second tranche this February.

Source: Business Standard