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Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.’s K.V.S Manian, once touted as a potential chief executive officer, has resigned after almost three decades. Shares of the lender fell. 

Manian, a joint managing director, is leaving to pursue other opportunities in financial services, according to a copy of his resignation letter that the bank posted in a stock exchange filing late on Tuesday. His departure was accepted with immediate effect. 

Kotak shares dropped as much as 4.4% when shares reopened after a public holiday. This was the most in a week after its stock was pummeled when the regulator barred the bank from adding new online customers and issuing fresh credit cards over risks concerns.

“Losing a long-standing key management personnel is a negative amid many exits in the last one year and on the back of RBI’s recent ban,” analysts at Nuvama Institutional Equities said in a note.

Manian was just appointed to his most recent role in March, and was responsible for spearheading growth at the wholesale bank, commercial bank and private banking. He also oversaw the institutional equities and investment banking businesses. 

The reshuffling of senior executives came after former Barclays Plc. banker Ashok Vaswani joined the bank as its new CEO in January. Manian had been among the contenders to succeed the bank’s billionaire founder and previous CEO Uday Kotak. 

India’s banking regulator had approved Vaswani’s appointment instead of choosing an insider, in a bid to reduce Kotak’s influence on the bank he founded, Bloomberg News reported last year. 

(Updates with share price fall in third paragraph and analysts’ comments. An earlier version corrected date in second paragraph.)

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