HDFC Bank CEO Aditya Puri sells stake in lender for Rs 156 cr; receives stock options worth Rs 42.20 cr in FY19

HDFC Bank’s chief executive officer Aditya Puri reportedly sold one-fifth of his stake valued at Rs 156 crore in the bank a week ago, said a news report.

Puri sold 12.52 lakh shares of the country’s largest private sector lender between 11 and 12 February. Before selling the shares, he had held 77.45 lakh shares or 0.14 percent of bank’s equity capital, said a report in The Economic Times.

Puri, who will turn 70 this year, had received stock options to the tune of Rs 42.20 crore in the current financial year as compared to Rs 41.06 crore in the previous year, the report said.

In January this year, HDFC Bank had decided to retain global executive search firm Egon Zehnder to find a successor to managing director Puri as its board sought to end an impasse and zero in on a candidate.

The board’s decision to recruit a global head-hunting firm comes as a six-member internal search committee, appointed in November last year, had not been able to reach a consensus on selecting a successor to Puri, who has been at the helm of the country’s largest private lender since its inception in 1994.

Puri, whose term comes to an end in October this year, is also an advisor to the search committee tasked with identifying a suitable candidate.

It is noteworthy that Puri, the managing director and chief executive since 1994 when the bank was set up, has seen a whopping 41 percent increase in total remuneration in 2019 to Rs 13.67 crore.

In August last year, Puri became the highest-paid bank chief executive in the country followed by Axis Bank CEO Amitabh Chaudhry during the financial year 2019.

Puri, who led the bank since its inception 25 years ago, had a monthly basic pay of Rs 89 lakh while Chaudhry, who took over the position in January, is earning a basic monthly salary of Rs 30 lakh.

— With inputs from agencies