Devil in Pinstripes Read online

‘If you think so, then why don’t you tell this to this husband of yours. Tell him that GE does not deserve him. He will be better served working with NYB.’

  When Amit heard this, he was shocked. The smile disappeared from his face in a jiffy. How the hell did Aditya know about GE? The only people, apart from his wife and himself, were the consultant and HR at GE.

  ‘Ady . . . Aditya, I do . . . don’t understand. Where did you hear this from? Not true at all.’

  ‘Son, I am paid to keep a watch on all of you. That’s my job. You folks are my key resources. If I can’t keep a watch on you, then I am not doing my job. What say?’ and then he turned his attention to Chanda. ‘So what do you want to do?’

  Chanda was equally stumped. She didn’t expect Aditya to know about GE. If she sounded nervous, it would be a give away. She decided to play on.

  ‘Aditya, I want to get into a product role. As a phone banking supervisor for the western region, I have had exposure to all products and have a reasonably good understanding of what consumers expect. I would definitely consider moving, if I get some kind of a product role. Possible?’

  ‘If not, I will create one madam!’ said Aditya in a drawling voice. ‘We need people like you to take this organisation to the next level. Not people like your husband who doesn’t realise what this organisation can do for him.’ Amit didn’t react. Whatever he said or did could be held against him. Aditya didn’t raise this discussion again, and the dinner went off peacefully.

  The dinner ended soon thereafter and both couples went their own ways. Aditya’s car zipped through the near empty streets on Colaba enroute their Bandra Pali Hill residence. Natasha looked at Aditya. It was one of those few dinners where Aditya had not had too much to drink.

  ‘Why did you ask Chanda to join you?’

  ‘You will never understand this, Natasha. Amit is one of our key guys. He has just moved to head the largest branch in Mumbai for us. Below him I do not have the bandwidth to replace him. What do I do? I know he is interviewing with GE. If he goes, I know the business will suffer. I need some time to identify a replacement and put him there. If I give his wife a job with us, it raises his stakes here. He will think twice before quitting. Even if he leaves sixty-ninety days down the line, I really don’t care. By that time I would have built adequate back up in the system. Giving his wife a job is only to hold him back. It will prick his conscience hard if he quits within days of us giving his wife a bigger job.’

  ‘Aren’t you mean, Aditya? The poor fellow thinks that you are helping him.’

  ‘He is a good guy to have. Has a good future at NYB. I am only helping him. And in the process, helping myself. You won’t understand Natasha. Leave this to me.’

  That night, Chanda and Amit had a prolonged discussion on whether or not Chanda should be joining the bank. Whether it made sense or not? What are the positives of both of them working in the same bank? Oblivious of Aditya’s self-centric intent, they trusted him completely. They were willing to place themselves in the hands of someone for whom they were just a means to achieve a number, a target, a goal. Anything else just didn’t matter.

  ‘What happens to the GE offer then?’ asked Chanda.

  ‘If Aditya gives you a good offer at NYB, I will drop GE.’

  ‘What about the business manager role?’

  ‘It’s fine. I will wait for it. I realised today. It’s better to work with someone who has your interest at heart, rather than a business manager designation with an organisation where you know no one.’

  ‘I agree.’

  And that was the end of their discussion. GE was dumped. Aditya had protected his turf.

  2001

  NYB Financial Services

  Mumbai

  New York International Bank carried all its lending business through an independent financial services arm – a company called NYB Financial Services (NFS). The latter was a large company with a network of over a hundred branches across the country. It was a subsidiary of NYB and was managed and run like an independent company, with a completely different management. It had its own CEO, its own board of directors, its own processes and its own set of resources. The only linkage the NFS management team in India had with the NYB management team was Aditya. Given that NFS was owned by NYB, Aditya had strategic oversight on the company. However, the day-to-day operations of the company were run completely independent of NYB.

  The company had its head office in the busy Goregaon area of Mumbai. Spread over five floors, the impressive office had over four hundred people working in it.

  10 a.m. in the morning. Gowri Shankar walked into the reception area of NFS. The guard stood up as if he was pricked from behind and gave him an energetic salute. He ignored the guard and briskly walked up to his second floor office. A smirk on his face, a swagger in his walk. This was clearly his fiefdom. He was the undisputed king there, and it was pretty evident.

  He walked into his cabin, placed the laptop on the table, connected it to the LAN and powered it on. Just when he was about to start working, there was a knock on the cabin door. It was the pantry boy. The guard had informed the pantry about Gowri sir’s arrival and the tea had been instantaneously dispatched.

  ‘Aaja! Aaja!’ Gowri looked at the pantry guy and waved him in. ‘Thodi der kardi aaj,’ said Gowri, implying that the tea had come in a bit late. The pantry boy looked up nervously, mumbled something and left the tea on Gowri’s table before disappearing quickly. This was Gowri’s style. Put the opposition under pressure, even if there is no need to. The tea had come within 120 seconds of him entering his room, despite which he had to comment on the delay.

  He picked up his tea and walked across the adjacent cabins to the cabin of Manish Kakkar, the credit director of NFS. Manish was a close friend and confidante of Gowri. After fifteen minutes of gossip, which centred around condemnation of NYB, and glorification of NFS, Gowri headed back to his room, en route checking if there were others who subscribed to his view about NYB.

  There was a background to this. Twelve months ago, NYB in India had made a strategic acquisition. In a coup of sorts they had acquired a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) which they later christened as NYB Financial Services.

  Gowri, Manish and others were a part of the acquired finance company. It was normal for employees of the acquired company to be apprehensive about the acquirers, who are normally looked upon as predators. Gowri and Manish amongst others carried a grudge against NYB for having acquired what they felt was ‘their’ company.

  This was despite the fact that unlike other normal acquisitions, NYB had been very sensitive towards the employees of the NBFC. They had tried to ensure that people in NFS did not feel threatened or overawed by the presence of a number of people from NYB and had deputed very few people from the bank. This included the managing director to run the company. It was important to have the senior-most person at NFS as someone from NYB, since it aided the cultural integration of the two organisations. However, as far as day-to-day running of the show was concerned, NYB had largely left it to the local management of NFS.

  Irrespective, the likes of Gowri were unhappy. They were used to running the organisation like a mom and pop show, like their own fiefdom. Suddenly a large organisation was forced onto them, and they had to follow laid out policies and procedures of NYB which had, to a large extent, curtailed their free run. This was not acceptable to them. Rules often come with fixed accountabilities and that was not something they liked.

  As a consequence, Aditya’s strategic oversight of the organisation was a sham. There was no reporting relationship between NFS and NYB on paper. The country statutory regulations required that the two organisations operate independently and NFS used this excuse to prevent any kind of interference from NYB. Such was the state of the politics between NFS and NYB that on the face the employees were very cordial to one another, but behind the scenes, it was a completely different story. Hari, the managing director of NFS, who was sent by NYB to oversee the integra
tion, was too weak to take on the NFS coterie and soon, he too fell in line. Rather than take on the militant staff in NFS, he too joined them in the crusade against NYB.

  Gowri was in one of those defiant, anti-NYB moods, when he got a call on his internal line. It was the receptionist.

  ‘Yes Neelam?’

  ‘There’s a lady waiting to see you at the reception.’

  ‘Does she have an appointment?’ The call came to him because his secretary had not come in by then. In the normal course she would have left a printout of his schedule for the day on his table.

  ‘Yes Gowri. She says she has an appointment and that it was lined up last evening.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ A silent pause at this end, ‘. . . OKAY. She will have to wait for some time. Send her after about ten minutes.’

  ‘Sure Gowri,’ and the receptionist hung up. Gowri got busy with his emails.

  ‘Knock knock!’ his concentration was disturbed by someone at his cabin door. Through the glass, he could see a pretty young girl standing there holding a brown leather file in her hand. He looked up and nodded, asking her to come in. The girl was nervous and did not understand Gowri’s nod. This made him get up, walk to the door and open it for her. ‘I asked you to come in.’

  ‘Thank you sir,’ she said sheepishly.

  Gowri, held the door open till the lady had crossed him and then stretched his neck, looked outside in the direction of his secretary, who had not come in by then. He looked towards Manish’s secretary, who was normally quite punctual and shouted, ‘Do chai bolna’. A second later, he looked at the lady seated in his room and asked her, ‘Will you have some tea?’ The demure thing didn’t have a choice and just nodded her head.

  Gowri came back and settled in his executive swivel chair.

  ‘Aditya had called me yesterday. Spoke to me about you. He obviously thinks very highly about you.’

  ‘He is just being kind sir.’

  ‘I know. I know . . . he is very kind,’ he said cheekily.

  After about thirty minutes of sarcastic conversation, he finally asked her, ‘So young lady, what kind of job would you like to do?’

  ‘Anything which is challenging and gives me an opportunity to learn new skills.’

  ‘Even a secretary’s job is challenging.’ When he saw that the comment was not appreciated, he softened. ‘Just kidding. Give me five minutes. Just wait outside my room, I will call you in.’

  When the girl had stepped outside, he picked up the phone and dialled a number. ‘Come to my room. We have to hire someone.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now. Please come quickly Sunil. I have lots of other stuff to catch up on.’

  He kept down the phone and dialled another number, ‘Kakke yaar, yahaan aana’. Kakke was what Manish Kakkar was called in NFS.

  Kakke and Sunil (the head of HR) were in Gowri’s room in five minutes.

  ‘Yaar, yeh bank walon ne toh is company ko dharamshala samajh rakha hai,’ NYB was referred to as ‘The bank’ in NFS circles. Gowri was implying that the people from NYB were under the impression that NFS was like a free guesthouse, where they could park anyone they wanted to. He was irritated that the NYBankers had sent someone to him to hire and he did not have a choice.

  ‘Sunil, please hire her and give her a job.’ After a pause he added, ‘Any job, else that bastard Aditya will be after my life.’

  After another short bitching session about the bank, Sunil came out of the room. He looked around the office and called out loudly. ‘Chanda! Is Chanda here?’

  Chanda was sitting on a single-seater sofa on the other side of the hall. Hearing her name being called out, she stood up and started walking towards Sunil. ‘Yes sir, I am Chanda.’

  ‘Great. Chanda, come with me.’ Chanda quietly followed him to his office.

  By the end of the day, Chanda was hired by NYB Financial Services as a product executive in the personal loans department and had to report to Gowri. A forty percent hike in salary demonstrated how low her salary in the previous organisation was.

  That night, Amit called up Aditya to thank him for his help in getting Chanda a job with NYB Financial Services.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ Aditya asked him.

  ‘Plan?’

  ‘About GE . . . are you planning to join them? I believe they have made you an offer.’

  ‘Aditya . . . I . . .’

  ‘Listen buddy. Don’t bullshit me. I know you have got an offer from GE. If you are going I need to know.’

  And without waiting for him to respond, he added, ‘Give me three to six months. You are important to me. Let me manage your career. I will take care of you.’

  ‘Aditya, it’s a business manager’s role.’ Finally, Amit accepted that he was in discussions with GE.

  ‘I will give you a business manager’s job in six to twelve months. Trust me. In this growth phase we need good people like you. And what’s twelve months in a lifetime?’

  Natasha was in the room when Aditya was talking to Amit. She just shook her head and walked out of the room. She knew that Aditya was conning one more guy.

  That night, Aditya had sealed two deals. He had managed to keep Amit from leaving NYB, thereby protected his own business numbers, and he had also bought Amit’s loyalty for life. The exit barriers for Amit had been raised.

  2001/2002

  NYB Financial Services,

  Mumbai

  Gowri was the undisputed king of NFS. Going from strength to strength in the company, he had become a power centre which even NYB couldn’t ignore.

  In fact, he had played his cards brilliantly. In 1999-2000 when NYB acquired the NBFC, there was a general feeling of insecurity in the company. They had just been acquired and people feared for their jobs, and their careers. Like all takeovers, this one too was accompanied by the fear that the bank would come in and make their jobs redundant, by bringing in their own people, who in turn would bring in their own teams.

  In such a volatile situation, Gowri was the most outspoken. He was the politician who emerged as the rallying point for the NBFC team. The only one in the NFS senior management who was quite vociferous in his dislike for the bank and for the people from the bank. These emotions came naturally to him because he was a part of the NBFC from the day it had been formed. Though it was rumoured that his dislike for the bank also stemmed from the fact that at some point in time, he had been interviewed by NYB but his application had been turned down. This was more than enough for him to be caustic towards NYB and NYBankers. Though he would never accept it, he secretly harnessed dreams of working in a multinational bank like NYB.

  Gowri’s influence ran deep. There were around eight hundred people working in over hundred branches of the NBFC, many of them handpicked by Gowri. All of them who were involved in the business of giving out loans to the lower strata of society, loosely referred to as the subprime loans, and owed their allegiance to Gowri.

  The business model of the NBFC was simple and straightforward. They had set up branches in residential areas, dominated by the lower middle class segments. Customers would be encouraged to just walk into the branch to avail loans. From cash loans and loans for buying consumer durables or two wheelers to mortgage loans for buying houses and cash loans against the collateral of property, the company offered every variety.

  Loan approving officers (also known as credit officers) would be seated in these branches. They would meet the customer, understand his needs and based on his affordability, approve or decline a loan. The entire branch was managed by a branch manager.

  In a branch, the buck stopped at the branch manager, who was responsible for sales, i.e. responsible for meeting branch targets for loan disbursals. He was accountable for approving loans and in case of a customer default, reaching out to the customer and collecting money from him was also his responsibility.

  The branch manager reported to a regional manager, who eventually reported to a branch network head, who in turn was answerable
to Gowri. The branch managers by vitue of this chain of command took instructions from no one but Gowri. Such was Gowri’s control over the organisation.

  Gowri’s influence ran deep. The master politician, had his own network of informants and did not believe in relying only on his hierarchical control chain for information. The man had his methods. He had the knack to reach way down into the organisation, at times even down to the last level in the command chain. The network of informal ‘informants’ would feed back information about all the little but important details of whatever was going on in the company. Anything happening without his knowledge or consent would reach him in a matter of minutes. To him, loyalty and alignment mattered the most. He would dole out favours to anyone who was aligned to him – both visibly and in thought process. This also meant better increments, higher bonuses and even quicker promotions for those who towed his line.

  Why wouldn’t guys at the grass root fall for such benefits? Gowri exploited this weakness in the system and the people. Such was his influence that everything including HR, credit and even financial control was under his sphere of control.

  With that kind of power, it was but natural for anyone to resist the advances of an MNC bank. NYB taking charge would mean that all the adhocism in the running of the company would have to go. It could no longer be run as a small time mom and pop show. Everything would have to be accounted for and the central focus of power which rested with him till now was under a big time threat. The free run had to end. The company had to be now run in a manner which was explainable to compliance, human resources teams of NYB and everything was subject to an audit as per NYB policies, which were a lot more stringent as compared to NFS.

  While Gowri’s control was not something which could be called a compromise of integrity, it was surely not a transparent exercise of power either.

  Chanda joined NFS in this background. She had no idea what she was getting into. She joined them in August of 2001 as a product executive in their personal loans department.