Kundapur Vaman Kamath

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

A profile

The Times of India, May 12 2015

Success at ADB stint, audacious track record clinched the job

Mayur Shetty

ICICI Bank chair man Kundapur Vaman Kamath's success in another multilateral institution -the Asian Development Bank (ADB) -and his track record as an audacious, development-oriented financier has helped clinch the top job at the BRICS bank. The significance of the position of president can be gauged from the fact that RBI governor Raghuram Rajan was once speculated as a candidate for the job. While Kamath's years in ADB between 1988 and 1996 were not path breaking, they did give him an exposure to South-East Asia during the region's high-growth years. During this period, he was also on the board of several Asian companies as ADB's representative. In his own words, Kamath had seen China, Philippines and the Asian Tigers including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand create the right conditions for growth with low interest rates and stable inflation. He came back to India with the view that the same situation can be replicated here as well.

An alumni of Karnataka Regional Engineering College and IIM-Ahmedabad, Kamath's first brush with entrepreneurship was managing his father's roofing tile factory after his engineering classes near Mangalore. The small town beginnings did not hamper Kamath's big thinking.The 12th Five Year Plan envisages an investment target of $1 trillion (Rs 63 lakh crore), which is a little lower than total funds with banks (Rs 87 lakh crore). Kamath is not fazed by this number and according to bankers, already has his thoughts on how these funds can be raised at low interest rates.

New Development Bank, or the BRICS Bank, would be the 67-year-old Kamath's fifth innings after his role in ICICI Project finance, ADB, ICICI Bank and more recently in Infosys as chairman. Kamath's years in ICICI Bank (1996 to 2009) was marked by bold fund-raising programmes, expanding the scope of financial markets, funding India's middle-class consumption and fulfilling global dreams of Indian corporates.His tenure in ICICI Bank was also marked by speed to execution.