Bandhan Bank’s chief financial officer quits after 16 months

KOLKATA: Rajeev Mantri is out as Bandhan Bank’s chief financial officer, barely 16 months into the job. The Kolkata-based lender told stock exchanges on Monday that Mantri had resigned, blaming the oldest excuse in corporate India: career growth.

Mantri, who doubled up as executive president, handed his resignation letter to managing director and chief executive Partha Pratim Sengupta on June 29. His last working day is September 25, giving the bank a three-month runway to find a replacement.

In a letter dripping with parting niceties, Mantri thanked the board, executive directors and colleagues for backing him through what he called the bank’s strategic transformation. He said he was leaving with “enriching experience and learnings”, corporate-speak for moving on to bigger things.

The disclosure was filed under Regulation 30 of SEBI’s listing rules, which forces companies to flag changes in key managerial personnel without delay.

Mantri is no stranger to musical chairs in the CFO’s office. A chartered accountant from ICAI with an executive MBA from INSEAD, he arrived at Bandhan in February 2024 after a three-year stint as CFO for Citi’s India cluster. Before that, he ran finance at TransUnion CIBIL and spent over 15 years at Standard Chartered across India and Singapore, with a detour leading finance for corporate and investment banking at Mashreqbank in the UAE.

He took over from Abhijit Ghosh, who had been keeping the seat warm as interim CFO since October 2023, after Sunil Samdani walked out in July that year.

That is three CFOs in under three years, a churn rate that will raise eyebrows well beyond Kolkata. Bandhan Bank has, for now, gone quiet on who fills the chair next. Investors will be watching the door just as closely as the balance sheet.