In the YES Bank boardroom, nomination battle today

The board of directors of YES Bank, the private sector lender, is scheduled to meet Thursday to consider the candidature of Shagun Kapur Gogia, as directed by the Bombay High Court.

While the outcome is uncertain, the impact of whatever the decision is will be felt for a while.

It’s quite a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

If the board disapproves Gogia’s nomination, it may come under fire for having a biased approach.

If she is inducted, the functioning of the board may get impacted due to frictions created.

Three weeks back, Madhu Kapur, widow of YES Bank co-founder Ashok Kapur, and her children – Gogia and Gaurav Kapur, moved the Bombay High Court seeking a stay on the bank’s annual shareholders’ meet.  They also contested appointment of three directors – Diwan Arun Nanda, Ravish Chopra and M R Srinivasan – on the board.

Wouter J Kolff, former director of the bank who has worked closely with both Rana Kapoor and Ashok Kapur was recently quoted criticising the Shagun’s approach.

“Well apart from the fact this type of behaviour is not very proper in the interest of family relationship and it’s not very acceptable to have this type of combat, and if we scratch some markets to the intentions of the party involved … I hope that she will realise that this action was not very proper,” Kolff said an interview with Bloomberg TV.