In a surprise development, the promoters of Fino Payments Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fino Paytech Limited (FPL), have voted out the chairman of the bank they themselves had appointed.
FPL voted against a resolution to re-appoint chairman and independent director Mahendra Kumar Chouhan and Puneeta Kumar Sinha, another independent director. Further, a proposal to amend the Esop conditions was voted against, too.
Worth mentioning here is that FPL has investors such as insurance giant Life Insurance Corporation of India, ICICI Bank, ICICI Lombard, Corporation Bank, Union Bank, Blackstone, and others.
At present, the digital payments bank headless is as an overwhelming 80 per cent of shareholders, including 100 per cent of the promoter group, voted against the re-appointment of Chouhan and Sinha.
“Fino Paytech Limited followed a due process to re-appoint independent directors. In order to introduce fresh talent and experience to meet the evolving challenges of the market, the board of Fino Paytech Limited decided to limit the tenure of independent directors to one term,” it said in a statement.
“The significant contribution made by our outgoing independent directors over the past five years and we miss their strategic steer,” it added.
Since May 2017, both Chouhan and Sinha were on the board of Fino Payments. The bank started operations in June 2017 after it got its principal licence in 2015.
Shares of Fino Bank climbed by 2.21 per cent to close at Rs 305 apiece on Monday as against Rs 299.50 at previous close on the BSE.
In 2017, Fino Payments Bank started operations after it got a licence from the Reserve Bank of India in 2015.
Citing experts, ET mentioned that this sudden development is likely to adversely impact the bank’s reverse merger plans with its holding company, slated for later this June.
“Unlike others like HDFC Ltd or IDFC, here the promoters who selected the chairman seems to have overwhelmingly lost confidence in him,” a institutional shareholder of the company told the business daily on condition of anonymity.
