Banker on the course: Rana Talwar

This is a blast from the past. One banker who took on some of the biggest deals and many on the golf course. He plays golf regularly, often at The Wentworth Club in London. He has been credit with turning small banks into giants or merging banks at a time India was new to it. Banking is a space that’s been expanding in India now with digital banks but Rana Talwar saw the trend in financial services much earlier. Living in London he runs a private equity company and over the weekends he plays for money on the golf course. The original piece was published here by Economic Times.

Which was the hardest deal to crack?

Standard Chartered buying Grindlays from ANZ in 1999-2000. Getting permissions, and then doing the deal at a time when my old friends at Citi were competing with us, wasn’t at all easy. We did the deal to buy Grindlays but the approvals involved a long difficult queue.

Also Read: Pramod Bhasin On Staying The Course

Where were you last spotted playing with clients?

My last game with clients was at the famous Belfry Course, near Birmingham in UK during an Experian Golf Event.

Why the name Sabre for your firm?

What’s my name? Talwar. Sabre is Talwar in English!

Any regrets, coming from a career spread across global banks?

There are always some regrets. But if one is going to be aggressive and innovative, one is bound to make mistakes sometimes.

Is golf the only crazy thing you do?

No. I also play cards (laughs) a lot and I once loved to gamble.

Gambling and banking don’t go together, or do they?

Well, they aren’t quite mutually exclusive. You have to figure out the odds, the risks, the chances of winning and the chances of losing, strike the right balance between risk and reward. Banking is about taking risk and managing it.