If God Was A Banker (24 page)

'It was a bad idea, I agree,' said Sundeep. 'What have I not done for this organisation? I gave it my best, I pushed everyone and got revenues doubled in eighteen months, but at the first sign of a problem, they drop me like a hot potato.' Sundeep was not too happy with the way Kailash had spoken to him that morning. But he had only himself to blame. He was the one who drove people madly and looked the other side when they made mistakes. He realised that he was lucky to have survived this.

He washed his hands and walked into his study. His cell phone was blinking. He had put it on silent mode. He picked it up. Karuna was trying to reach him. He disconnected the phone. He was in a very foul mood. He did not want to speak to anyone. The phone blinked again. He looked at it and again disconnected Karuna's call. He switched off his phone and threw it on the table. He had some important work to do.

He picked up the cordless and called Naresh. He was the one who could do something for him.

A
fter Sundeep had left the room, Kailash called his secretary, 'Aparna, can you get me Chetan urgently.' The phone in his room beeped. 'Kailash, Chetan Bindra's secretary on the line.'

'Good morning, Margaret from Chetan Bindra's office,' came an anglicised Indian voice from the other end of the line.

'Margaret, can I speak to Chetan Bindra?' Chetan was the current Head of Retail Bank for NYB for the international markets—that is, all countries except the US.

'Hey Kailash. How are you, old man?' It was Chetan Bindra, in his usual high-energy tone. Chetan had joined the group twelve years ago as the marketing head for India, and now he was the king of retail bank across the globe for NYB. His rise had been spectacular.

'Good evening... I'm sorry, good morning Chetan,' said a nervous Kailash, mixing up the time zones.

'I just had a word with Sundeep and have told him that he must bail out and take the first job we are able to get him overseas. This will divert a fair bit of attention from the core issue.'

'I feel sorry for him. He is a bit like me in his approach. I see myself in Sundeep. I like him,' said Chetan, 'It's a bit unfortunate that he got caught in this controversy.'

'He is a great talent and a good leader, but he lacks controls, Chetan. I have counselled him on a number of occasions to be careful and discreet.'

'Good.'

'Chetan, the purpose of my call was to discuss about who we should bring to replace Sundeep.'

'What's the doubt? You clearly need to bring in a mature guy like Swami.'

'But Chetan, he is not a great leader. He doesn't know how to keep his people happy. He cannot run at the same pace.'

'Kailash, you have seen the problems you have to deal with if you run with a guy like Sundeep. I would rather take a balanced approach rather than a cowboy approach. This time we were fortunate to have escaped. Our stock price didn't get impacted. But we might not be so lucky next time around. Our stocks will take a pounding and the loss in market capitalisation will be far more than the miniscule gains we will make in India. Not worth the risk, my friend. Get Swami. He has run operations in the BPO. Is process oriented. Has migrated process from overseas to the BPO. Knows how we as a bank operate in other countries and is very high on integrity. And most importantly, he was the one who launched retail bank in India.'

'OK Chetan. I will communicate accordingly. But what about Sundeep. Where will he go? He was telling me about a position in UK with Martin Sanders, as Head of Retail for UK.'

'Oh, of course. How could I miss it? I am okay giving that role to Sundeep. It is a big role. The business in UK has stagnated for the last three years. Sundeep will be able to kick start it. That business has the potential to become one of our largest businesses. I will speak to Martin. You go ahead and commit the role to Sundeep.'

'Thanks, Chetan.'

'Aparna,' screamed Kailash. She came in running. 'Can you get me Swami?'

'Sure, Kailash.'

'No. Don't connect him to me. Ask him to see me tomorrow morning at nine. I want to meet him in person.'

B
etween that night and the next morning, two big deals were closed. Sundeep was to move to UK as Head of Retail Banking and Swaminathan was to become the next Head of Retail Bank for India.

Despite the screw up, Sundeep was saved the ignominy of an ouster from the bank.

When Swami came out of Kailash's room, he called his mother. 'Amma, I have made your dream come true. I have today become the Head of Retail Bank for one of the biggest banks in the world.' His mother was in tears. She decided to go to the temple of the family deity and do an A
bhishekam,
a traditional bath given to the lord by the devotees.

When Kalpana heard about this, she didn't know how to react. She knew how bad Swami had felt when he had to report to Sundeep. She also knew how Swami had felt like quitting when he was shunted out to BOCA. She had been his source of support and motivation. She just hugged him and wept. She was very happy for him. Life had come a full circle for him.

Sundeep had to move to UK in a few days' time and so he could not give a complete handover to Swami. He was under such a pressure to move quickly that his team could not even give him a farewell.

The first thing Swami did on taking over was to make sure that the business numbers didn't go down. Recovering from a downward slide was more difficult than recovering from a growth trajectory.

He hit the road and went to every branch and reassured every employee that all was well. He reiterated the importance of training, compliance, and doing business the right way. There was a stretch when he visited eleven cities in six days and held town-halls in every one of them. All employees of the bank attended these town-halls. The passion with which he delivered the speeches in these town-halls was very unlike Swami.

He took a very smart step. He roped in Aditya as a consultant for the bank. Aditya too was glad to be of help. He wanted to set everything right in a business they had started from the scratch.

Swami realised that Sundeep was only a people's guy. He had not gone into the nitty-gritty of the entire business. He now started asking tough questions from his team. Every cost was questioned. Non-compliance became a bad word. People were running scared of doing anything unethical. Swami would hound them.

The rampant frauds in Ram Naresh's unit were dealt with very strongly. With one crack of the whip. Swami made Akshay Bhalla fire a team of over 125 people from Naresh's team, as they were suspected of rigging personal loan files to make them fit for approval.

Naresh called Kailash to crib about Swami, but Kailash couldn't do anything about it. He tried talking to Swami, but Swami was like a man possessed. Kailash decided to lay off. On matters of integrity it was always safe to side with the person who has an honest reputation.

Time flew. People forgot about the whole mutual fund debacle. Swami became a hero once again. He had two successes in a row—the BOCA turnaround, followed by the retail bank success. He had shown that to be a leader you don't have to be flamboyant or sexy. You have to honestly apply your mind.

O
ne thing happened before Sundeep left for his new assignment. Something that Sundeep hadn't imagined would happen.

That night when Sundeep, after his morning discussion with Kailash, had refused to take Karuna's call repeatedly, Karuna had something very important to tell him.

She would have called him at least twenty-five times. His phone was switched off. 'Who is he sleeping with now?' she had thought in desperation. She called the landline at home and Sundeep had picked up. She was a bit relieved that he was not sleeping around with anyone in Mumbai.

The previous day when Sundeep was in office, Karuna had walked into his cabin. Sundeep was looking very irritated and had walked off with Anindyo for lunch. They had stepped out to the Café Coffee Day outlet, just opposite their large HQ for a sandwich. He had forgotten his mobile behind.

The moment Sundeep stepped into the lift, his mobile started ringing. Karuna heard it ring and picked up the phone. She looked at the screen and saw the number flashing. She did not know whose number it was. She let it ring for a while. She was not sure whether to pick it up or not. Finally she decided to pick it up. The moment she picked it up, she heard a woman's seductive voice, 'Hi honey, I am back in Delhi.
Kab aa rahe ho?'
Karuna hung up. The phone rang again. It was from the same number. She put the phone on silent. Reena was typing something for Sundeep's visa in her cubicle outside Sundeep's room. Karuna quietly pocketed the phone and walked out.

She had to go to some place where no one would see her. The rest room! Yes, the toilet was the best bet. She walked straight to the toilet and locked herself in. Then she opened her purse and took out her own mobile. She retrieved the number of the last received call from the call log on Sundeep's phone. Then she keyed in the same number in her mobile phone and pressed the dial key.

Now, if the number you are dialling is already stored on your mobile, the person's name appears on the screen when you press dial. The screen on the mobile blinked and a name flashed on the screen. It was someone she knew. Her jaws dropped and eyes popped out. The name on the screen was 'Nidhi Agarwal - Delhi.' Now it became very clear to her. The person on the phone was Nidhi Agarwal! Sundeep had recently changed his phone and hence all the names were not keyed into his phone memory. That's why his phone didn't display Nidhi's name when she called. She went into Sundeep's messages and read all his sent messages. There were messages sent to Nidhi in Delhi, Priya from BOCA in Mumbai, someone called Kalpana, and, of course, to her.

Was this Kalpana Swami's wife? For a minute she thought anything was possible, but on closer examination she realised it was some other Kalpana.

All almost at the same time. At times even the same message had been sent to multiple people. She was almost about to break down when the main door of the bathroom opened and someone came in. She flushed and came out quickly. She had to keep the phone back before Sundeep returned from his lunch.

She quietly walked into Sundeep's room along with a few papers, kept the phone on his table, and walked out before Reena could realise what was going on.

That night she had rung him at home to confront him. But Sundeep had refused to pick up his phone and had disconnected. She was very upset, but had felt utterly helpless to do anything.

C
hetan Bindra moved on to replace the Worldwide Head of Retail Bank. It was a very big move for him, reporting directly to Tedd Bridge, the CEO. He was very excited. The job he was currently doing came up for grabs. Chetan was clear. He wanted an Indian to do the job, probably a reflection of his nationalist sentiment. The good thing about NYB was that there were many Indians in senior positions, and they would help fellow Indians get larger roles, because they genuinely felt that Indians were better and intellectually brighter than most of the other people in the world. And, most importantly, Indians were a loyal breed, who would slog their butts out if you did them a favour.

But there was no one across the globe who could fill in such a big role. He split up his job into two: Managing Director-Retail Banking (Emerging Markets) and Managing Director-Retail Banking (Rest of International). The former's brief was to cover the emerging economies like India, Brazil and China, and the latter's to manage all the developed economies except USA.

He decided to move Sundeep to New York and give him one of the roles. At that time Sundeep was based in London. He was also very impressed by Swami. The way Swami turned around the India retail bank business stood him in good stead. He settled on Swami for the second role. Kailash Advani was asked to sound out Swami about the role.

'I do not think I would be keen to move out of the country at this time,' Swami had responded. His mother was growing old. She refused to move out of the country, and, for Swami, moving back to New York would have meant moving away from her again. He did not want to do this to someone who had struggled all her life to make him successful. He let the opportunity pass.

For Sundeep, this was a big break. He had expected the India incident to wreck his career, but it seemed to have worked well for him. He jumped at the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.

Sundeep moved to New York as Managing Director of Retail (Emerging Markets). His family relocated to America almost at the same time.

F
rom the corner of his eyes, Sundeep looked at the trophies that adorned his cabinet. Louisa walked in with a few e-mail print outs and left them on the table.

Swami's and Sundeep's careers had been neck to neck till this very moment. 'Had Swami accepted Chetan Bindra's offer, he would have been sitting in the cabin next door,' thought Sundeep. When he looked back at it, Sundeep felt that he had more regrets about his career as compared to Swami, who seemed to be more at peace with himself.

If God gave him a chance to be a banker again, he would prefer to live Swami's life rather than his own. Swami also had Kalpana, whom Sundeep so desperately wanted. He would have then had a friend like Aditya, who stood with Swami through the thick and thin and helped him sail through bad times.

He was sitting on his table, head between his hands, staring at the carpet below. He did not know what to do.

T
he year 2005 was a great year in the history of NYB in India. NYB reclaimed its position as the leading foreign bank in India, a position it had lost in the aftermath of the mutual fund debacle. Swami was on cloud nine. The entire success was being credited to him. He was now hailed as a visionary, a balanced business builder, an honest professional with great values. He was seen as a role model for the burgeoning middle class. Stories of how Swami, a regular middle class guy from Chennai, went on to head the retail business of the largest foreign bank in India made folk lore. He would be invited to all the financial services awards ceremonies. Customers who had left NYB in the wake of the mutual funds scam, returned to the bank. Assets grew, deposits grew, and so did profits.