One of the most recognisable faces in the country’s financial services sector, Naina Lal Kidwai is one of the few women to have made a mark in the ultra-competitive world of investment banking.
She earned her investment banking stripes at Morgan Stanley as a deal maker for information technology firms in the early 1990s. She was also instrumental in engineering the joint venture with JM Financial in 1997.
In 2002, Kidwai moved to HSBC as deputy chief executive officer of HSBC in India and managing director and vice-chairman of HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India.
Kidwai, who holds an MBA from Harvard University, has also had a stint in consumer banking as head of retail banking (western region) for ANZ Grindlays Bank in the early 1990s.
She has rapidly moved up the ladder at HSBC and this week the banking group announced that it had appointed Kidwai to its Asia-Pacific board, where she will be the only executive from India.
However, in the past few years, HSBC’s banking business in India has come under strain, with the consumer bank recording losses for three straight years. In 2009-10, the bank recorded a 37 per cent fall in net profit and its loan book shrunk by 15 per cent.
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In 2009, the bank brought in Stuart Davis from HSBC Australia to take charge of the bank while Kidwai was elevated to the position of group general manager.
Kidwai has been repeatedly ranked in Fortune magazine’s global list of Top Women in Business and in the Wall Street Journal’s and Financial Times’ Global Listing of Women to Watch. She is also a recipient of the Padma Shri by the government of India for her contribution to trade and industry.