Rajnish Kumar, the senior most of the managing directors at State Bank of India (SBI) will become the 25th chairman of the country’s largest lender, succeeding Arundhati Bhattacharya, who is set to retire on 6 October.
The government on Wednesday announced his appointment for three years. Kumar currently is in charge of retail banking at SBI.
Kumar’s appointment comes at a time when SBI’s profitability is under strain because of ballooning bad loans and sluggish credit growth. At the end of June, the bank was weighed down by gross non-performing loans of Rs 1.88 trillion. Gross bad loans account for almost one-tenth of its total advances.
SBI is also the lead bank in a majority of the 40 cases referred for bankruptcy proceedings at the National Company Law Tribunal.
 will become the 25th chairman of the country’s largest lender, succeeding Arundhati Bhattacharya){kind=link}