IDFC First Bank MD&CEO V Vaidyanathan gifts 1.5 lakh shares each to three persons to buy homes

In a rare gesture, IDFC First Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, V Vaidyanathan, has gifted a total of 4.5 lakh shares of the bank to three persons as a gift for purchase of home.

Vaidyanathan has transferred 1.5 lakh shares each to M Selvaraj, Alexia Selvaraj and Utkarsha Todankar as a gift, the bank informed the stock exchanges on Thursday. At Thursday's share price of Rs 55.30 apiece, the shares are worth a total of approximately Rs 2.5 crores.

It is learned that these three individuals are the support staff of Vaidyanathan. They had identified houses but needed financial assistance to complete the purchase. Since the transactions were fairly large, it was disclosed to the stock exchanges.

"We wish to inform you that Mr. V. Vaidyanathan, Managing Director & CEO, has transferred the following shares of IDFC FIRST Bank held by him to the persons named attached. It is declared that the recipients are not related to him in any manner under the definition of related parties of the Companies Act or SEBI Regulations," the bank said.

These transactions are without consideration, the bank said.

Further, Rukmani Social Welfare Trust has sold 2,00,000 shares for COVID efforts and other such activities.

This isn't the first time Vadiyanathan is gifting his shares for philanthropic activities. In September last year,  Vaidyanathan transferred one lakh equity shares of IDFC FIRST Bank held by him in his personal capacity to his former school teacher.

Vaidyanathan gifted shares to Gurdial Saroop Saini, as a gift, without any consideration as a token of gratitude for his teacher's help to him at an earlier stage in his life, the bank said. “It is clarified by Vaidyanathan that Mr. Saini is not a related party under Companies Act, and that the recipient will pay taxes as per applicable tax laws,” the bank said in a communication to exchanges then. Also, in 2018, while still with Capital First, Vaidyanathan gifted 4,30,000 shares to his family members, colleagues and maids.

Vaidyanathan is founder, Capital First, which merged in to IDFC Bank in December 2018, creating IDFC First Bank.

Vaidyanathan is a veteran banker who worked with Citibank Consumer Banking from 1990-2000, before moving to set up ICICI Group's retail banking from 2000-2009 since its inception.

Vaidyanathan was instrumental in building ICICI Bank's branch network to 1,411 branches and 28 million customers.

In 2010, Vaidyanathan quit ICICI Group for an entrepreneurial opportunity to acquire an NBFC (non-banking finance company) with an idea to convert it to a bank, focused on consumer and MSME lending.

On acquiring equity stake, he shut down all non-core businesses like broking and real estate financing, and instead used the NBFC platform to build MSME and Consumer Financing businesses, based on new technologies and algorithms.

Between 2010 to 2018, Vaidyanathan grew the loan book from start-up stage to Rs 29,600 crores grew the equity capital from Rs 691 crores to Rs 3,993 crores.

Later, Capital First was merged with IDFC Bank in December 2018 and Vaidyanathan took over as the MD and CEO of the merged entity.

Vaidyanathan is an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School.