67-year-old Chidambaram returns to the crucial portfolio at a time when the country's economic growth has slipped to a nine-year low of 6.5 per cent in 2011-12 and restoring confidence among foreign and domestic investors needs urgent attention.
He left the Finance Ministry to succeed Shivraj Patil as Home Minister, days after the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been holding charge of the Finance Ministry after Pranab Mukherjee quit on June 26 to contest Presidential elections.
A Harvard educated lawyer, Chidambaram became the face of India's economic reforms when he took over as the Finance Minister in the United Front government in 1996 under H D Deve Gowda.
He presented a budget that vastly slashed tax rates and contained a number of sops for the corporate sector which was hailed as a "dream budget". That the budget could not have its full run due to the fall of the government then, is a different story.
Hailing from a small business community of prosperous Chettiars of Tamil Nadu, Chidambaram was in the forefront of the economic reforms unleashed during the P V Narasimha Rao government post-1991 and executed by Manmohan Singh as finance minister.
He made his re-entry into the finance ministry after the UPA was voted to power in 2004 beating many other claimants to the post.(MORE)
