Why Vinay Tonse's final stint at SBI matters most as Yes Bank's new CEO
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: When Vinay M. Tonse takes over the reins of Yes Bank Ltd, the private lender would be significantly different in character and strength from where it was about six years ago.
The comparison with March 2020 is inevitable because the bank, founded by now disgraced banker Rana Kapoor, was on the brink of collapse. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stitched together a rescue involving the State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank Ltd, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, among others. These lenders infused capital after the regulator superseded the board.
Late on Tuesday evening, Yes Bank told the exchanges that RBI has approved Tonse’s name as the next chief executive. Shares of the bank rose on Wednesday, following the news, ending the day's trade at ₹21.52 apiece, up almost 1% from the previous close. “Yes Bank’s history shows that growth was never the constraint, risk was," analysts at Ventura Research said in a note on 9 January.
“In its early years, the bank scaled rapidly through aggressive corporate lending, building size, but accumulating latent asset-quality risks that culminated in the FY19–20 crisis." Ventura Research said that the bank’s journey from elevated stress to one of the lowest net bad loan levels in the industry reflects a fundamentally altered credit culture. “The transition from aggressive growth to conservative underwriting, high provisioning, and focused recoveries demonstrates a root-to-branch transformation in asset quality management, rather than a mere cyclical clean-up," it said. Meanwhile, most banks divested their stakes after the three-year lock-in, but SBI remained invested, finally selling 13.2% in September 2025 to Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.
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