Axis Bank denies reports of Shikha Sharma moving to Tata Group

Shikha Sharma is the MD and CEO of Axis Bank. Sharma, who is serving her fourth term, has decided to shorten her tenure by more than two years. Sharma’s decision came after the country’s apex bank the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) questioned the bank’s performance and its deteriorating asset quality. Under Sharma’s tenure, Axis Bank – the country’s third largest private lender – reported its gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rising from 0.96 per cent in March 2009 to 5.28 per cent in December 2017. Axis Bank has also been pulled up twice by the central bank for under-reporting bad loans for financial years 2016 and 2017.

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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Axis Bank has denied reports of its CEO and Managing Director Shikha Sharma looking to join Tata Group to lead its financial services vertical.

According to a BloombergQuint report quoting an unnamed source, “Tata Sons' Chairman N Chandrasekaran has selected the managing director and chief executive officer of India’s third largest private lender to head the vertical that will include companies like Tata-AIA Life Insurance and Tata Capital.”

However, Axis Bank in a statement has denied it strongly stating the assertions are “untrue and unfounded”.

Speaking in a post results conference call, Jairam Sridharan, CFO of Axis Bank said, "Clearly there is a lot of interest in the leader of our bank. We can confirm to you quite unequivocally that there is no truth to this speculation that is going on and the news that you are referring to is utterly false."

In a statement, the bank said, “There is a laid down process that the board undertakes at regular intervals, but to conclude that there is going to be a change of leadership is entirely premature and speculative.

“Last but not the least, we request you to exercise utmost caution in airing your speculative assertions because such malicious reports may only cause spread of unnecessary apprehensions and concerns that are neither in the best interest of the bank nor its stakeholders,” the statement added.

According to previous reports by Bloomberg, Axis Bank has appointed executive search firm Egon Zehnder to find a CEO after Sharma’s term ends next year even as she is eligible to reapply.

It is said that Tata’s Chandrasekaran is working on a plan to consolidate more than 100 companies of the USD 103-billion Tata Group into six clusters, each headed by an independent head.

The Tata’s Financial Services cluster will includes five companies:

• Tata AIA Life Insurance
• Tata AIA General Insurance
• Tata Asset Management
• Tata Capital
• Tata Investment Corporation

Burdened with large stressed loans for more than a year now, the bank is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Axis Bank’s gross bad loans have jumped the steepest in the industry by over 350 percent in the last five quarters.

In Q1FY18, the bank’s profit fell 16 percent to Rs 1,306 crore and its gross non-performing assets marginally went up to 5.03 percent.