Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of State Bank of India, attends the Annual Bankers’
When she was a village branch manager in eastern India, she was quick to grab a screwdriver to fix power outages. Now, as the most-powerful woman in Indian finance, Arundhati Bhattacharya must tackle the highest bad-loan ratio among India’s 10 largest banks.
Appointed in October as the first female chairman and most-senior executive officer of the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India, Bhattacharya has been combing through balance sheets riddled with 678 billion rupees ($10.9 billion) of bad debt. Some 5.7 percent of total loans at the 207-year-old behemoth are nonperforming, the highest level in at least eight years, the earliest date for which data are available, exchange filings show.
Indian Finances Most-Powerful Woman Tackles Bad Loans