After Aditya Puri, who?

I would not like to be in the shoes of Egon Zehnder, the global executive search firm engaged by India’s largest lender by market cap HDFC Bank Ltd to identify a successor to its managing director Aditya Puri. The longest serving boss of any bank of this size globally, Puri has been at the helm since the bank’s inception in 1994.

This is the toughest assignment in the Indian financial sector — the most talked about succession plan after Tata group chairman Ratan Tata stepped down in December 2012. Puri retires in October this year.

The issue was first discussed at an