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.
72
One 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.
73
Chetan 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.
74
New York
From 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.
75
The 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.
Swami became very people oriented. He started getting involved in everything that concerned his people. He worked with his team on resolving issues, encouraged collaboration among his team members, frowned at distracting organisational politics, and rewarded hard work and effort, even if they did not bring in the desired results.
In all this, Kalpana was a major source of support for him. In her role as an HR compliance officer, she helped Swami put together the compliance hotline service for all staff. Swami used it to cleanse his system. A compliance hotline was nothing but a toll-free telephone line with a recorder at the other end. The number of this telephone was widely publicised among the employee community. Anyone who found anything fishy taking place in the system could call on this line and complain. A process was put in place so that all these queries would be looked at and addressed
at a senior level.
Swami never killed the messenger. He never went looking for good news. His philosophy was that good news travels to you, even if you do not ask around. It is the bad news that one has to hunt for, as it hides below files and paper. Swami diligently went about finding the bad news and fixing things.
Once NYB employees started trusting the system, they began to come out in the open. Swami had tremendous faith in this system and ownership of the process at the top helped. He would seriously monitor each and every complaint that came in.
Aditya was Swami's aide. Swami would bounce all his ideas off Aditya before he implemented them.
A key focus area for Swami was cost control. His past experience also helped him here. He started doing away with the business intermediaries. He had spent enough time in BOCA to know that scale in outsourcing always helps. He set up his own telecalling team in BOCA rather than rely on what was left of Naresh's call centre. He also set up an in-house sales channel which was more productive and hence cost effective as compared to a DSA outfit.
He dramatically cut down the payments made to the Nareshs of the world. When they came complaining, he categorically told them that the bank could not afford anything more than what was being offered and that it was up to them to either take it or leave it. Naresh was very upset. He complained to Kailash. But even Kailash, who was now close to retirement, told him there was little he could do to help him. This was the first time in over a decade that even Naresh was helpless.
NYB had a very efficient system of global audit. This audit would grade countries by effectiveness of control, adherence to policy, and efficiency of operation. Basing on the above three gradings, countries would be classified into low, medium and high risk categories. The global audit team would audit the high-risk countries once a year, and the medium risk countries would be subject to audit once in two years.
After the mutual fund fraud, the rating of the India business was changed to high risk and towards the later half of 2005, the global audit team decided to visit India.
Global audit was a very serious exercise, which was at times career threatening. There had been instances in the past in which a poor global audit had led to shutting down of businesses or sent high-flying careers tumbling down. Everyone, including Swami, was paranoid about the consequences of a poor global audit.
Around the same time Mona Albance, a member of the Global HR team, was expected to visit India for a week. She was in charge of diversity and work environment.
76
Ekta was one of the senior most female employees of NYB and was the Head of Training for India. As Swami would be tied up with preparations for the global audit, he requested her to manage Mona's visit.
Preparations for the audit had begun in earnest, over a month before the team actually landed. Though Kailash was not too concerned about NYB clearing the audit, Swami was not taking any chances, the perfectionist that he was. Although the preparedness, the controls, and the basic banking discipline had improved since Swami took over the reigns, there was always work to be done till the last day.
All critical areas were checked, documents revisited, key files eyeballed again, and any shortfalls taken care of. All processes were critically re-examined for compliance with regulatory requirements. Nearly half the bank was working on getting in shape for the audit. 'You can always make up for lost business, but can never make up for a screwed up audit,' Swami had once said.
Ekta had handled many visitors from the group, but she was a bit foxed on how to handle Mona. Mona hadn't given her a brief on what she wanted to achieve in those five days. How long can you spend on diversity related issues? At most you could give her a diversity-related presentation for a few hours and sit through a couple of meetings. But, five full days on diversity-related issues was a bit too much. Ekta had no clue. She did, however, line up a five-day agenda for her and sent it to Swami. Swami sent it to Mona without giving it a second glance. He was too preoccupied with audit-related issues. The agenda read as follows:
Day 1 Monday
9.00 a.m. Pick up from the hotel by Ekta and drive to NYB HO
10.00 to 1.30 Meeting with Swami and introduction to the senior management team
12.00 to 1.00 Meeting with HR Head (Abhinav Mookherjee)
1.00 to 2.30 Lunch with Ekta and the training team 2.30 to 3.30 Free time to catch up on e-mails 3.30 to 5.30 Talent management update
Day 2 Tuesday
9.30 to 12.30 Meeting with HR Managers of other financial institutions, followed by lunch
3.00 to 5.00 Review of recruitment policy, equal opportunity employer
5.00 to 6.00 Discussion with Swami
Day 3 Wednesday
Day visit to Agra, see Taj Mahal
Day 4 Thursday
9.00 a.m. Drive to South Mumbai branch, interact with the branch team 12.45 p.m. Lunch with South Mumbai branch team 2.30 Drive back to the HO with Manager-Women's Accounts
3.30 to 5.00 Meeting with Vivek J and Akshay Bhalla to understand their business needs
7.30 Dinner with key women executives of the bank
Day 5 Friday
Morning-Meeting with three women executives of the bank
Lunch with Swami at Taj Lands End
Wrap up and free time
7.30 p.m. Drive to the airport with Ekta
Mona Albance landed in India three days before the audit was supposed to begin. As her flight taxied into Terminal A of the international airport, she took a deep sigh. She had come here on a mission. No one in the India team was aware of her mission. Actually, not many people anywhere knew anything about it. This was her first visit to India, and not many from the India management team had ever met her. The impending audit had ensured that her visit kept a low profile. She reached the hotel well past midnight. The jetlag didn't let her sleep.
Monday morning, when Ekta went to pick her up from the hotel, she was surprised. She was expecting a fifty-year-old woman. On the contrary, she found Mona to be a young and attractive woman in her mid-thirties.
As they drove in Ekta's Merc to the head office of the bank in Bandra Kurla Complex, Mona was a little taken aback by the obvious poverty on street display. The south Mumbai hotel where Mona was staying seemed to be an upmarket location lined with high-rises, sprinkled with buildings with a colonial architecture. On her way to the hotel last night, she had seen a number of slum dwellers sleeping on the pavement.
'How come there is so much disparity in the lifestyles of people?' she asked.
The Indian corporates are always ready for these usual questions from visiting foreign dignitaries. Ekta gave her a prepared speech on population growth, lack of infrastructure, India's GDP, its purchasing power parity and so on. Mona wasn't satisfied, but she didn't want to embarrass Ekta and kept quiet.
They reached the HO fifteen minutes late. Swami was waiting for her in his room.
'Welcome Ms Albance, it's a pleasure to have you with us.'
'Pleasure is mine, Swami.'
'Hope you had a comfortable flight to Mumbai. Was it on time?'
'Oh yeah. BA is normally on time.'
'And the hotel? Hope your room is comfortable too.'
'Thanks for asking, Swami. Yes, it was very comfortable.'
The pleasantries went on for a few more minutes, after which Swami's management committee also joined in.
Mona seemed quite happy to meet Swami and his team. 'Is this the team which worked with Sundeep too?' she asked.
'Part of this team also worked with Sundeep,' said Swami.
Mona did notice the squirming at the mention of Sundeep's name. Was 'Sundeep' a dirty word? She didn't know.
After a round of basic introductions, Swami gave her a small docket.
'Mona, this is the itinerary that Ekta has drawn up for you. We had e-mailed it to you earlier. We have covered all that we thought would be relevant to you and where we would need your support. It will also help you spend your time here effectively. Do let u
s know in case you want to cover anything more and we will be happy to provide you with all the inputs that you may need.'
She opened the docket and quickly glanced through the agenda.
'Thanks Swami. This looks fairly extensive. I just have one comment. I pretty much know what I need to do in these five days. I do not want anyone to baby sit me or manage me. I will pretty much manage on my own. I might need some support in these five days. It would be nice if you could assign someone to work with me while I am here.'
'We have assigned Ekta to take care of all your needs. She will be with you for the next five days.'
'Swami, I drove in with Ekta this morning. She is a wonderful woman. I need someone junior, someone who can take calls, call in people, draw up notes, etc. I don't think it is right nor is it possible for Ekta to do all this. I need someone junior.'
'Sure. If you could share the agenda with us, we will be able to streamline things.'
'I will let you know as we go along. It will help if we identify some support staff quickly.'
Swami looked at Ekta. 'Karuna? Do you think she would be able to work with Mona.'
'Not a bad idea. Let me check if she is around.'
Once Ekta came back with Karuna, Swami stepped in. 'Ekta, why don't you take Mona to meet Abhinav, by which time I will brief Karuna. You guys are already ten minutes behind schedule.'
'Thanks, that will not be required, Swami. I will brief Karuna myself,' Mona interjected. She didn't want to give anyone any time to react or over-manage issues when she was there.
Swami was a little hurt, more by the manner in which she spoke rather than what she said. He didn't like the arrogance in her tone. 'Fine,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. 'American!' he thought as she left his room.
If God Was A Banker Page 19