Priya Subbaraman, Chief Regulator Officer at National Stock Exchange (NSE,) and Sanjeev Kaushik, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, have been shortlisted for the post of MD and CEO of National Share Depository Services Ltd (NSDL), a leading provider of equity demat accounts. Current NSDL MD and CEO GV Nagesh Rao has been serving since 2013 and is currently on extension.

The nomination and remuneration committee (NRC) of NSDL, after a slew of interviews, recommended the two names to market regulator SEBI, which has the final say on the appointment, sources told BusinessLine .

NSDL provides services to investors, stock brokers, stock exchanges, custodians and issuer companies. Subbaraman is a law graduate and a company secretary who has worked as a senior compliance officer with Kotak Securities, Kotak Bank, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC. She is the favourite to head NSDL, the sources said.

Some of the past high ranking officials and even heads of NSDL have come from the NSE group, the original promoter of the depository company. NSE still holds a 26 per cent stake in NSDL, which has IPO plans, following in the footsteps of its rival CDSL. Subbaraman has been NSE’s chief of regulations since February 2018.

Kaushik is an 1992 batch IAS officer. He is an MBA from London Business School and a Mechanical Engineer from BITS Pilani. Between 2011 and 2015 he was the Director, Capital Markets in the Department of Economic Affairs. He has worked in the capital market divisions of HSBC and Lehman Brothers in Mumbai, and Bank of America Securities in London. Between 2015 and 2018, Kaushik was the head of India Infrastructure Finance Company and Industrial Finance Co of India. Besides, he has been the chairman of the Stockholding Corporation of India, and currently serves on the board of NABARD and The New India Assurance Company.

Subbaraman said she would not comment on rumours and speculations. Kaushik did not reply to phone calls.

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