Naina Lal Kidwai-A Force to Reckon With

Naina Lal Kidwai, 45, a renowned Banking Guru, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of HSBC Securities & Capital Markets is unarguably the highest-paid women executive in India and one of the country's foremost businesswomen. The Fortune magazine in its list of the world's top 50 corporate women has picked her in 2003 for her outstanding achievement in the corporate arena.

Her Background

Raised in Mumbai and Delhi, she went away to school in Simla, in the Himalayas, and has conducted her career at similarly lofty heights ever since. A Delhi University alumna,she graduated from Harvard Business School in 1982 and was the first Indian woman on their rolls. Her qualifications and experience have underlined her success, and she readily admits, that gender has rarely been a barrier to her success.

Her Persona

Naina Lal Kidwai is arguably a creator of trends. When she shows interest in a company, people sit up and take notice. Her ability to learn from her experience and use that knowledge has seen her scale the corporate ladder rapidly. Her success has been credited to her skills at networking with the bureaucracy and the corporate world. Her instinct for spotting a deal combined with her ability to predict market trends have contributed to her meteoric success in the corporate world. Kidwai joined ANZ Grindlays Bank (now Standard Chartered Bank) in India in 1982, rising through the ranks in a variety of merchant, retail, and investment banking assignments.In 1994, when she joined Morgan Stanley, IT was not the rage. It was only an emerging investment area. Naina Lal Kidwai spotted the opportunity and cashed in for her clients.In 1999, when Morgan Stanley was in trouble with its mutual funds, Kidwai took it by the scruff of its neck and implemented a strategic business plan that was focused on IT investments. Since then, she has been involved with helping Indian IT giants raise capital.


Through a joint venture with the investment bank JM Financial that she helped draft, Kidwai expanded Morgan Stanley’s impact in the country dramatically. She was instrumental in the NYSE listing of Wipro; in facilitating nationwide cellular phone service through a deal involving the Tata and Birla families and AT&T; IPO of automobile giant Maruti Udyog, and in a number of privatizations. November 2002, she became vice chairman and managing director of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation’s (HSBC) investment banking and securities business in India. She was selected as one of 2002’s fifteen emerging “Global Influentials” by Time magazine; in 2000, Fortune magazine named her the third most powerful businesswoman in Asia.
Ranked 47th in the Fortune magazine's list(2003), Kidwai is recognized as one of the most powerful investment bankers in the country. Her success as a banker has given her a strong foothold in a male-dominated sector of Investment Banking.

Married and the mother of two children, Kidwai, a devotee of Western and Indian classical music, enjoys returning to the Himalayas for trekking and to observe wildlife.

Kidwai says she has no plans to leave India. "In the U.S., I may have brokered bigger deals, but here, it's much more at the cutting edge of reform, the ability to influence, to shape."