A muddled start for HDFC Bank’s Sashidhar Jagdishan

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Editor's note: Numbers can be magical. One look at HDFC Bank’s 2021-22 second quarter earnings bears this out. It beat estimates by posting a 17.6% jump in profits and a similarly impressive 12.1% rise in net interest income, or the difference between what it earns from its lending activities and what it pays depositors. In the same three months ending September, the bank’s gross non-performing assets ratio stood at a mere 1.36%, the lowest in the industry. In the stock market, HDFC Bank has been the banking industry’s bellwether for years now and continues to be the third most valued company in the country.  By all accounts Sashidhar Jagdishan, who took over from the venerable Aditya Puri as managing director and CEO in October 2020, should be sitting pretty.  He had promised change. “In the last 28 months, we have been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons when it comes to technology. Also, there have been deficiencies in compliance... As a bank, we are certainly sorry for what has happened,” he had said in his first note to shareholders. But have …