The Hindu Business Line : Oriental Bank suspends ex-GTB Managing Director Gande, 2 others

THE management of Oriental Bank of Commerce that had acquired Global Trust Bank has suspended the former GTB Managing Director, Mr Sudhakar Gande, and two other senior officials.

The decision comes in the wake of the Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram's announcement in Parliament on Wednesday regarding action being proposed against persons responsible for the collapse of the erstwhile Global Trust Bank.

Informing this to the GTB employees on Thursday evening, the OBC management is learnt to have said that the decision was taken since these officials were not functioning judiciously and in the interest of the bank. The GTB employees were asked not to honour the orders of suspended officials.

Though OBC had acquired GTB on August 14 this year, Mr Sudhakar Gande, whose tenure is till March-end next year, was continued for the purpose of supervising the auditing of GTB accounts up to the time of acquisition by OBC.

When contacted, Mr Rajiv Madhok, OBC General Manager and in-charge of the Strategic Business Unit covering the operations of erstwhile GTB, confirmed the suspension of GTB MD and two other senior officials but declined to reveal details.

Integration `smooth': However, sources in OBC told Business Line that the integration of erstwhile GTB with OBC was going on quite smoothly and that the bank does not foresee any negative impact of the suspension of senior GTB officials on the integration process.

"In fact, while some of the senior officials found guilty have already left on their own, some well before the acquisition and some immediately after the acquirement, the OBC management has taken action against one President and one Senior Vice-President during the last fortnight. As a part of this process, the MD was also suspended. We hope that these actions will not lead to any panic among the GTB employees. We believe that these actions are in the interest of all the stakeholders of the bank — employees, depositors, customers and shareholders," sources said.

They, however, declined to reveal the exact details of the acts committed by these officials leading to their suspension. "We expect the entire technology integration process to be complete before the current fiscal-end. The fully merged entity will have combined balance sheet, common technology platform and common product portfolio," sources said.

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Oriental Bank suspends ex-GTB Managing Director Gande, 2 others