Rajnish Kumar, former chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), has joined Kotak Investment Advisors Limited (KIAL) as an exclusive adviser for its special situations fund, according to a release.
KIAL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank, focuses on the alternate assets business of the group. It made the final close of its special situations fund at $1 billion (Rs 7,130 crore) in mid-2019.
The Economic Times, early this month, cited Kumar as saying he had taken up an advisory role at Baring Private Equity Partners India four months after his retirement.
A query sent to Kotak late evening on Kumar’s role as an exclusive adviser did not elicit any response immediately.
The special situations fund, launched in February 2019, is anchored by a $500 million commitment from a wholly owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Announcing the final close in 2019, Srini Sriniwasan, managing director and chief executive of KIAL, said that the fund had a flexible investment mandate.
KIAL, set up in early 2005 to bring a sharper focus to the group’s alternative assets, has raised about $4.6 billion across different asset classes including private equity funds, real estate funds, infrastructure funds, special situations fund, listed strategies and investment advisory.
Other top bankers taking up advisory roles include Arundhati Bhattacharya, who started advising homegrown private equity firm ChrysCapital in 2018. However, in March 2020, she joined US cloud-based service provider Salesforce.com Inc as CEO of India unit.
Late last year, global private equity firm Carlyle Group appointed Aditya Puri as a senior adviser in Asia days after his retirement as chief executive officer of India’s largest private-sector lender HDFC Bank.