ICICI Chairman KV Kamath is top banker

Mumbai, Mar 17: ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO K V Kamath has been recognised by The Asian Banker Leadership Achievement Award programme as top banker in the Asia Pacific and Gulf Region.

Besides many milestones, ICICI has achieved in its short history and its tremendous growth story in becoming India's largest private sector bank, the panel of judges in the Asian Banker Achievement Awards programme recognised that the accomplishments in 2007 of Mr Kamath stood out distinctly from those of his peers.

While the bank's financial performance in 2007 was certainly impressive, it also became clear that Mr Kamath had key vote in guiding the bank's huge leap forward towards the bank's strategic goal of building a truly unique global institution, according to a release here today.

The vision of strengthening the bank's overseas presence in important strategic locations was backed up by the 10 billion dollar in capital raising the bank did in 2007, and in adding a series of branches in the West Asia, Europe and the US Mr Kamath led the bank in its decisive follow-through on that vision.

The findings of the peer survey sent to over 80 Asian bank heads further validated the advisory council's conclusions, as the respondents were nearly unanimous in their evaluations of him as Asia's most-admired bank leader.

Mr Kamth's peers in other banks regard him as someone who stands out clearly from other bank heads in the region, and his accomplishments were admired by all respondents.

Previous winners of this Asia Pacific award have been Mr Jiang Jianqing, chairman of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC China) in 2007, Mr John McFarlane, CEO of ANZ Australia in 2006, and Mr Guo Shuqing of China Construction Bank in 2005.

The Award was given at the Asian bankers Summit held in Hanoi yesterday.

UNI