Yes Bank CEO Rana Kapoor seeks approval for another 3-year term

Rana Kapoor is seeking shareholder approval for another term as chief executive officer of Yes Bank Ltd., the Indian lender which has set records for both loan growth and the highest proportion of disputed bad debt among its top private-sector peers. Shareholders are due to vote Tuesday on whether to grant another three-year term to Kapoor, who has helmed Yes Bank since 2004. Assuming he receives approval, Kapoor’s new tenure will then have to be endorsed by the Reserve Bank of India.

Yes Bank is among India’s most highly-rated bank stocks and it trades at a valuation premium to most peers, data compiled by Bloomberg show, reflecting its strong loan growth and profitability. More controversial is its record for so-called bad-loan divergence, the difference between the soured credit reported in the bank’s results and as assessed in subsequent reviews by the RBI, at a time when the central bank is increasing its scrutiny of problem assets.

“The board and the CEO are responsible for what numbers are reported, including the divergence,” said Shriram Subramanian, the founder of Mumbai-based proxy advisory firm InGovern Research Services Pvt. Ltd. He says the bank is “pushing the boundaries of governance” by reporting a sizable bad loan divergence for two straight years.

Yes Bank argues that the impact of the divergence on the bank’s results has been small because it was subsequently able to recover many of the loans labeled as problematic by the RBI. For example, of the 64 billion rupees ($950 million) in additional problem loans that the RBI said should have been reported for the financial year ended March 2017, the bank later wrote back 51 billion rupees, according to an emailed statement from a spokesman for the lender.

“We would like to highlight that Bank remains committed to fullest compliance with RBI regulations or norms and with further learnings from past risk-based supervisory exercises is confident of ensuring full conformity to all RBI guidelines,” the spokesman’s email said.

The RBI had asked banks to disclose any divergences from April 2017, as it attempted to get to grips with the $210 billion of stressed assets weighing down the banking system and in an effort to revive lending growth in Asia’s No. 3 economy. Yes Bank was one of several banks to be penalized, with the RBI imposing a 60 million rupee fine in October for the size of the loan discrepancies and other governance issues.

“Having accountability on part of the management for divergence is important,” said H R Khan, former deputy governor of the RBI, who declined to comment specifically on Yes Bank. “Certainly, holding the CEO responsible helps.”

On other measures, Yes Bank is the fourth-largest private bank in India by assets and the third-most profitable by return on assets among its private sector peers, data provided by the lender shows. Annual loan growth of 54 percent in the year to March 31 was the fastest among all banks in India, exchange filings show.

The substantial growth in the lender’s loan book will be reflected in profitability this year, said Asutosh Kumar Mishra, a senior analyst at Reliance Securities Ltd. “On the asset quality front, Yes Bank has effectively managed its corporate portfolio quite well as compared to other banks.”

Meanwhile, the bank’s so-called provision coverage ratio, a measure of its ability to absorb bad loans, stands at 50 percent, the lowest among India’s top private-sector lenders. The bank plans to increase the ratio to more than 60 percent by the second quarter of the current financial year, thanks to strong operating profits and a reduction in bad loans, the spokesman for the lender said.

Yes Bank shares were up 1.1 percent in Mumbai on Tuesday, extending this year’s gain to 6.9 percent. India’s benchmark Sensex index is up 4.4 percent in 2018. The bank also downplayed concerns that the RBI will highlight further divergences based on the reported results to end-March 2018. Hemindra Hazari, a banking analyst who has been tracking India’s lenders for more than two decades and publishes on the Smartkarma platform, has flagged risks associated with Yes Bank loans to Reliance Naval & Engineering Ltd. and Matix Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd.

Yes Bank loans to the shipyard are fully backed by cash collateral, while the chemical company loan was classified as non-performing following the end of the March 31 fiscal year, according to the bank’s emailed statement.