Corporate Governance Practices in India: A Comparative Study of Selected Banks

The issue of Corporate Governance has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years. It has received much attention in the emerging market economies, like India in later half of the nineties. The subject of corporate governance has become an interest of scholars, practitioners and media due to the accounting scandals at prominent companies such as Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Tyco, HIH insurance group, Satyam Computers Limited etc. Considering the role of banks as an important factor for the economic development of the country, the study has conducted a case study on few banks to review their corporate governance practices in India. For the study, four banks have been considered out of which two are public sector banks i.e., State Bank of India and Bank of India and the other two are private sector banks i.e., Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC Bank) and Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI Bank). For this, secondary data in the form of annual reports has been collected from the bank’s websites. On the basis of detailed analysis of Corporate Governance practices of the four banks, the paper reached on a conclusion that Corporate Governance practices are more satisfactory in private sector banks as compared to public sector banks.