But that is where the similarities end. ‘Talwar had his style and flamboyance. He also had charm and didn’t annoy or offend. He had a way of working with people,’ say many people who worked with both of them.
In an interview with Patricia Olsen of the New York Times, Talwar said that he’d learnt an important lesson from his parents, a working couple: how to work with people and how to deal with co-workers. ‘No one should see you as arrogant or artificial,’ he had said.
Rana, on the other hand, lacked Talwar’s charm. He could ‘offend’ and ‘rub people up the wrong way’ according to Bank of America insiders.
Rana seemed to have his own style probably influenced by Rutgers University rather than Talwar, the same veteran journalist told me.
Even as some other former Bank of America employees say that there’s no evidence of mentoring or favouring (of Rana) by Talwar, Rana did get ‘latitude’ in the way he could function.
‘Fingers were pointed at Talwar, but (during the scam time) there was no evidence or substance in the charges. And as far as Rana was concerned, the charges came later and didn’t involve the scam or Talwar. At least that was what it seemed to be on the face of it. The link between them came from their shared flamboyant lifestyles and people drawing similarities and the image that was built around Rana later. He tried building an image for himself —columns in newspapers which were probably done for him as he was too busy at the time. Anyway, the mud that stuck came later. This kind of acquired verve and flamboyance also made people feel that he was influenced by his association with Talwar during the Bank of America period,’ according to the veteran journalist.
‘I would say my first job was a developmental and learning phase where I imbibed the basic tenets of banking,’ Rana had said in 2003, in an interview to business daily Financial Express.
The new head who came in was a hardcore banker who followed the rule book strictly—Ambi Venkateshwaran. Rana’s new boss was not very fond of his style of functioning and he was sidelined.
‘He (Ambi) was suspicious of him. Every time he got a new project, it was delegated to someone else to vet through. In some cases, it was shelved,’ a common colleague of theirs told me once.
The constant sideliningg by Ambi became the ultimate reason why Rana Kapoor left the Bank of America and found his calling at ANZ Grindlays—a bank against which he nursed a grudge for not recruiting him fifteen years ago.
The way he used to function under Talwar wasn’t going well with Ambi. In 1996, the protocol had not been followed when sanctioning a huge credit line to one of the country’s largest corporate houses. This upset Ambi, who forced him to resign, one of the co-workers at Bank of America told me. While Rana might have resigned from the bank, it was because of Ambi, who never liked Rana’s way of functioning, that he had to forcibly leave, yet another veteran journalist who has tracked Rana’s life closely confirmed. How Rana got into ANZ Grindlays is a story in itself. His brother-in-law, Ashok Kapur, was at the end of his career at ABN Amro while Rana was hunting for a job. Mehli Mistry, the then CEO of ANZ Grindlays knew Ashok very well as the latter had worked at ANZ. Ashok felt obliged to do something for his brother-in-law, as he was the elder of the two, the people who knew both Ashok and Rana told me. He got him placed at ANZ Grindlays’ investment banking division as its head.
This incident reveals an interesting facet of Rana Kapoor’s personality. In a sector that’s often associated with a fondness for prudence, he had a ‘whatever it takes’ attitude. But, before he jumped ship, his colleagues made a very important observation about him: that he is a smooth-talker. That trait came to his rescue always. As the YES Bank chief, when he was on a suspicious lending spree, he remained the darling of most business journalists. In fact, eight hours before the ED swept over his posh Worli residence, he was calmly replying to my WhatsApp messages and claiming innocence, despite his fate being clear.
In fact, when the bank had sent us a legal notice on 22 September, one fellow journalist called me up saying: ‘They have been doing it with journalists even for the smallest of negative stories about them.’
Yet another person, who had formerly worked with the bank and been in the thick of such things, called and confessed that this has been Rana’s legacy, which the bank continued with even after Rana’s exit.
This was an important insight into Rana Kapoor’s functioning: that smooth-talking was just a farce that he put up. It was a public relations tool that he used over the years. In case he didn’t see things going his way, he used to unleash the usual corporate weapon of ‘defamation’.
This also brings us to the understanding of why there were no reports about the bank’s malpractices when they were actually happening. Most of the journalists who had covered the bank were swayed by Rana’s smooth-talking— an unusual trait in a high-profile bank chief—coupled with easy access to the ‘exclusive’.
There is an important lesson in all this, both for the common man and the journalist. When there is an overdrive of PR for anyone, there are high chances of something fishy going on at the top. In the past year, there was yet another bank chief who was disgracefully forced to step down—Parvez Nengroo of Jammu and Kashmir Bank. Parvez, like Rana, used to go on a public relations overdrive, while multiple bank officers with clean records faced his wrath for not obliging to his unrealistic demands.
Coming back to Rana’s stint with Grindlays Bank, it was these three years at the bank that led to the foundation of the institution that will go down in the annals
