Talk about many hats: Born into a Marwari entrepreneurial family in Kolkata, Sanjeev Kanoria is an expert in liver transplant surgery and, now, the owner of an Austrian bank. This is apart from his health care business in the UK
It was a slightly nervous group of employees who had gathered at the Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank headquarters in Klagenfurt in southern Austria in December 2013. They were waiting to hear the bank’s new owner outline his plans. The 178-year-old organisation they worked for had a proud history but it had been in trouble in the recent past, particularly after the economic meltdown in 2008. In 2009, the Austrian government was forced to take it over from BayernLB, one of Germany’s nine Landesbanks, to avoid a collapse that would have sent shock waves through central and east Europe.
A chunk of Hypo bank, as it is known, managed to get back on its feet in the next three years and, in 2012, the Austrian government carved out this domestic unit for re-privatisation. The 400-odd employees who had gathered in December 2013—many of whom had been on the bank’s rolls for decades—were part of this unit that was focussed on retail banking. The deal to sell the bank had just been announced in Vienna and there was curiosity about the man who bought it. After all, the new owner, Dr Sanjeev Kanoria, a British surgeon specialising in liver transplants, had as unlikely a background for a banker as anybody could imagine.
Kanoria, who had thrown his hat into the ring in May 2013, bought the bank in December for $90 million after approvals from the Austrian regulator. In the town hall meeting with the employees on December 17, he outlined his strategy for the bank’s future. To start off, he reassured the staff that no one would lose their job. The bank, which has 14 branches in the region, would remain focussed on retail and would look for ways to grow. The immediate steps would be focussed on cutting out wasteful costs and diversifying risks. Kanoria revealed that he planned to take the bank to the UK by the end of 2014. This would allow him to leverage his existing business networks and allow the bank to grow outside Austria.
Some would say that Kanoria is walking a path that is by now rather well-trodden. In the past decade, Europeans have become accustomed to entrepreneurs of Indian origin buying distressed assets and successfully turning them around. Of course, the significant difference here is that the asset is not a steel mill or a power project, but a bank. By February, Hypo bank will have a new corporate identity that reflects its Carinthian (south Austrian) heritage, but with an Indian touch.
Dig a little deeper into Kanoria’s background and you will find some of the answers to his multiplicity of careers. The 50-year-old has been an entrepreneur as much as a medical practitioner. Over the past 15 years, he has built a chain of 22 nursing homes in the UK. His company, Advinia Healthcare, which was grown entirely through acquisition of nursing homes, specialises in catering to patients that need dementia care and chronic care.
His wife Sangita has been a major contributor in building the business. While he struggled through his PhD for innovative research in reducing liver injury, Sangita managed operations with professional teams. Though not very large, Advinia has now grown to be a niche health care provider in the UK with 1,000 employees and a turnover of $40 million.
Kanoria’s other connection to the world of business and finance is ancestral. He is the second of five brothers from the Kolkata-based Kanoria family. His father and brother set up leasing and finance company Srei Infrastructure Finance in Kolkata 25 years ago; this is now run by the doctor’s two brothers Hemant and Sunil. Though Kanoria has a share in the family business, his brothers operate independently. Meanwhile, Hemant and Sunil have no stake in Advinia or the new bank business in Austria.
Forbes India caught up with Kanoria in Mumbai, where he spends a large part of his time these days. He had performed a nine-hour-long liver transplant operation at the Hiranandani hospital the previous day; the liver had been harvested the day before from a brain dead patient. Finding donors is still a big problem in India. Though this is the seventh transplant operation completed by Kanoria in Mumbai, he is still working towards putting together a full-time transplant team in the city.
Kanoria says his first step will be to increase the bank’s customer and market share within Austria. He wants to do this by lending to more businesses and SMEs. Once this is done, he will take the bank to London. The UK plan is largely to leverage on his business contacts and wholesale lending. “We have a good network of clients as well as the Indian diaspora and we can surely support them with the bank,” he says.
(This story appears in the 24 January, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)