Goldman Sachs has officially confirmed that Gunjan Samtani, co-chairman of Goldman Sachs India and head of its India global centre, will retire at the end of the year. According to a LinkedIn post by Samtani and confirmed by Reuters, the bank has named Ken Castelino and Balaji Sivasubramanian as co-heads to replace Samtani, who spent 16 years with the New York-based bank and nine years in his current role. The investment bank will replace him with co-heads who will oversee all activities in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, with the transition expected to be smooth over the coming months.
As confirmed by Reuters, Ken Castelino, who joined Goldman in 2006, is the head of global banking & markets-public in India and co-head of global equities electronic trading strats and engineering. Balaji Sivasubramanian serves as head of engineering in India and global head of enterprise partnerships engineering within platform solutions. According to the bank's internal memo, as co-heads, Ken and Balaji will oversee all of our activities in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, partnering with both global and local leaders - including the Bengaluru and Hyderabad Executive Council - to advance our priorities. The co-heads will continue to work closely with Samtani over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition.
According to Reuters, Goldman Sachs' global capability centre in Bengaluru and Hyderabad currently has over 8,000 employees, making it one of the company's largest offices globally. The bank established its Bengaluru office in 2004 for information technology and other back-office support activities, which has evolved to cover several technical and banking functions including finance, software development, R&D, corporate cash management, liquidity management, developing rich analytics and virtual account payments. About half of those employees are engineers, which translates into a third of the bank's global engineering talent. The global capability centres in India have moved beyond low-cost back-office support to higher-value functions, positioning them as key strategic hubs for Goldman Sachs' global operations.
As reported by Reuters, Samtani, who has also previously served as chief operating officer of engineering and global co-head of risk engineering, noted that during his tenure, 'we built, matured and scaled the firm in India -- shaping our engineering capabilities and business competencies that today stand as an industry-leading, platinum-standard platform, tightly integrated into the core fabric of the firm'. The bank's operations in India have evolved from back-office support to comprehensive banking functions, with the country now serving as a key strategic hub for Goldman Sachs' global operations across multiple technical and financial services. Samtani has been the face of the bank in India when it came to the engineering division, leaving behind a legacy of transforming the operations into a world-class technology and banking platform.
