A shoddy succession plan at HDFC Bank

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Editor's note: In the annals of corporate history, leaders are measured both with what they build and what they leave behind. That moment of reckoning has come for Aditya Puri. HDFC Bank Ltd is scouting for a successor to Puri, 69, who has helmed the bank as managing director since its inception in the mid-1990s. Puri, under whose watch the company went on to become India’s largest private sector bank by assets, also benefited in this 26-year stint. Earlier this week, he encashed most of his vested shares for Rs 843 crore. This is on top of the Rs 314.4 crore he has made from exercising his stock options in the last five years. Along with Puri, investors in HDFC Bank have made money too. But the question playing on everyone’s mind is, is this it? With Puri exiting, what is the future of the third-most valuable company in the country after oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd and IT services major Tata Consultancy Services Ltd? As an investor you’d imagine a sense of excitement inside the company heralding a change of guard, …