Kotak Mahindra Bank has appointed K M Gherda as the bank’s non-executive chairman. Uday Kotak will be the executive vice-chairman and managing director of the new bank.

The RBI has approved the appointment of Gherda and Kotak and the other senior officials under sections 10B and 35B of the Banking Regulation Act.

C Jayaram and Dipak Gupta have been appointed executive directors of the proposed Kotak Mahindra Bank. The bank board which met today approved these appointments.

Gherda, former vice-chairman and managing director of Tata Electric Companies, has been on the board of Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd as an independent director from 1986.

He was also on the local advisory board of the Bank of Nova Scotia and later became its chairman. The other directors on the board of the bank are Anand Mahindra, SAA Pinto, Cyril Shroff, M R Punja, Pradeep Kotak, Shivaji Dam and Ajay Sondhi.

Sondhi, the former managing director and country head for India at UBS Warburg, is now the group president (institutions) and the vice-chairman and managing director of Kotak Mahindra Capital Company (KMCC). The RBI had on February 6, issued a banking licence to KMFL.

This is the first instance of an existing NBFC becoming a bank. The RBI had on January 31 last year granted an in principle approval to KMFL and to three Indian finance professionals who teamed up with Rabo India, to set up commercial banks.