CEO Series Lecture

As part of our CEO Series lectures, last evening we had Mr. Keki Mistry, MD, HDFC on our campus. He spoke for about one and half hours on the requested topic “Roles of a CFO”.

He began with the traditional role of a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) in an Indian company, and then followed it with the changing business environment after the economic reforms of 1990s. The roles of the CFO have changed with the changing nature of industrial environment and global competition.

What I liked about his speech was perfectly balanced oratory, and that he didn’t use any fillers in his speech e.g. like, actually, I mean, what I want to say is that: I personally don’t like such fillers while speaking in public but have seen many of even the senior people take help of fillers like these. Also, almost everywhere, he went on explaining point wise, as if he had everything well prepared from before, when actually he was not. To top it all, the day was marked with the news about HDFC taking over Centurial Bank of Punjab, and when asked about it, he said: “We have neither denied not accepted the news. You will come to know about it tomorrow.” This made the audience chuckle.

According to him, Indians don’t have the ‘credit’ culture! Around 8-9% of the borrowers repay their loans to HDFC before the last date! This is in direct contrast to the credit culture that prevails in the West. While this was not a new realisation, I have always wished that we Indians remain in this way: our culture terms credit as bad thing, and that protects us from financial vulnerabilities in the long run.