MUMBAI: Private sector lender IndusInd Bank has said that its non-executive chairman and director, Sunil Mehta, will step down on January 30 upon completion of his tenure. Mehta’s exit comes after the bank, promoted by the Hinduja Group, faced regulatory scrutiny over an accounting scam in its forex trading book, which resulted in losses of over Rs 2,300 crore in the March 2025 quarter. He will be succeeded by Arijit Basu, who will join the board as an additional director and assume charge as part-time chairman for a three-year term from January 31, 2026, to January 30, 2029.
The private lender, which will announce its earnings later in the day Friday said, the appointment was approved by its board based on the nod from the Reserve Bank, and recommendations made by compensation and nomination & remuneration committee.
Basu was most recently the chairman on HDFC Bank's non-bank subsidiary HDB Financial Services, which went public in June with a bumper IPO raising Rs 12,500 crore. He was also a managing director of State Bank of India (SBI), prior to which he was the chief executive of SBI Life Insurance.
Basu currently also serves as an independent director on the boards of Prudential Plc, Peerless Hospitex and Hospital Research Centre and CleanMax Enviro Energy Solutions.
Mehta, who has been the chairman of Indusind since January 2023, led the bank during its crisis last year. The shares of the lender had crashed sharply after reporting the accounting discrepancies in early March this last year.
Following this, the then chief executive Sumant Kathpalia and his deputy Arun Khurana resigned in April last. Subsequently, Rajiv Anand was appointed as the chief executive of the bank.
The accounting scam on its forex trading desk came out after RBI had early March 2025 asked the bank to disclose the mismatches and book the losses if any in the March 2025 quarter itself. Following this the bank had in May 2025 said its loses from the scam was to the tune of Rs 2,300 crore.
Accordingly, the bank reported its first-ever loss in the quarter to the tune of Rs 2,329 crore for Q4FY25, reversing a Rs 2,349 crore profit in the same period last year. This sharp loss was driven by significant provisioning of Rs 2,522 crore for the derivative losses, and accounting irregularities in its microfinance portfolio. Despite the quarterly loss, the bank remained profitable for the full the full year.