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Kotak's Vaswani earns ₹30.88 Cr in FY26 as private bank pay outpaces PSU scales

Private bank CEO pay packages are pulling further ahead of public sector counterparts, with equity grants widening the gap beyond cash salary alone.

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Finsamudra Desk

14 Jul 2026, 12:00 pm IST · 1 min read

₹30.88 CrVaswani total effective pay (FY26)₹17.23 CrVaswani cash remuneration (FY26)₹60 lakh Cr+SBI assets under management
The Chairman of State Bank of India runs a bank with over ₹60 lakh crore in assets and 22,000 branches. Yet, their annual salary is capped in lakhs. Meanwhile, private bank CEOs ar
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Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Ashok Vaswani received total cash remuneration of ₹17.23 crore in FY26. Including the market value of stock options granted during the year, his total effective compensation package reached approximately ₹30.88 crore.

Other private bank leaders reported similarly large packages. HDFC Bank's Sashidhar Jagdishan took home ₹15.13 crore, while Axis Bank's Amitabh Chaudhry earned above ₹10 crore.

By contrast, the Chairman of State Bank of India — which runs over ₹60 lakh crore in assets across 22,000 branches — draws an annual salary capped in lakhs, governed by government pay scales.

The structural gap comes down to compensation design. Private banks use performance-linked cash bonuses combined with large ESOP grants to attract executive talent, while public sector banks rely on legacy pay structures and institutional prestige.

Sources

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