Pramit Jhaveri, who brought scale to Citi India, retires early

Pramit Jhaveri, the former country head of Citi India, has taken an early retirement after spending close to four decades at the bank in various capacities, sources said on Wednesday.

The 56-year-old Jhaveri had joined the Wall Street major as a management associate way back in 1987, and had a steady rise to become vice-chairman of banking, capital markets and advisory for Asia Pacific earlier this year, after heading the India operations for almost a decade between 2010 and 2019.

His retirement was announced by the Citi Asia Pacific chief executive Peter Babej over email to the employees, the sources said.

Babej's mail lists out the key milestones in Jhaveri's 32-year-long association with Citi, including his leadership of India operations.

"Jhaveri's leadership, partnership and friendship will be missed across our firm," the memo, which was reviewed by PTI, said.

A Citi spokesperson confirmed the development but without offering details.

"Jhaveri has decided to retire from Citi. During his tenure, he built a strong team and established Citi as a market leader in the country," the spokesperson said.

Under his helm, the bank's domestic assets almost doubled (95.48 percent to be precise) between FY10 and FY19, to Rs 1.86 lakh crore, while gross non-performing assets improved massively to 1.37 percent in March 2019 from 3.43 percent in March 2010.

Net profit has grown 386 percent to Rs 4,185 crore in the same period, when a majority of domestic banks were passing through a tumultuous period.

When he took over, the bank was witnessing a surge in bad loans in its unsecured portfolio and he went in for a restructuring, which resulted in the shuttering of 280 branches of Citifinancial, its in-house NBFC.

There was also an instance of an internal fraud in 2010, which was reported to be up to Rs 350 crore, leading him to massively revamp the internal risk management processes.