KV Kamath, who led ICICI bank to become the biggest private sector bank, has been elected by the government as the first President of the BRICS Bank.
The BRICS bank is one of the two international institutions created recently at the leadership of China; the other being AIIB. The bank with its head quarter in Shanghai is considered as a major alternative by the BRICS countries for the West dominated Brettonwoods institutions – the IMF and World Bank.
Though, China will have the headquarter as well as the largest funding injection, the proposal for the bank was made by India at the New Delhi BRICS summit.
As per the intra BRICS agreement, India will appoint the first President of the Shanghai based bank.
The proposed BRICS bank has an initial capital funding of $50 billion and is expected to increase to $100 billion later.
China has promised the biggest contribution, $41 billion, followed by $18 billion each from Brazil, India and Russia and $5 billion from South Africa.
The government’s has chosen Mr Kamath because of his eight years experience at Asian Development bank from 1988 to 1996. At the ADB, he worked at the Private Sector department and thus involved in various projects in countries including China, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Vietnam besides India. He was also worked as the ADB representative on the boards of several companies who availed finance from the institution.
Kamath is known for his long association with ICICI from 1971 onwards. Many in the industry believe that the bank has grown to the present day size because of his entrepreneurial approach. Under Kamath, ICICI achieved remarkable progress and became the second largest bank in 2007, just behind the PSB Giant SBI.
Similarly, the bank under Kamath’s time has developed some of the most prominent banking executives the industry has now, including Chanda Kocahar, Kalpana Morparia and Shikha Sharma.
