Mumbai, May 26: The State Bank of India (SBI) today said the government had appointed Rajnish Kumar as the managing director - compliance and risk department.

The post was lying vacant since November last year after the then managing director A. Krishna Kumar retired.

Rajnish Kumar will be the fourth managing director of the country's largest commercial bank; the other three being P. Pradeep Kumar (corporate banking group), B. Sriram (national banking group) and V.G. Kannan (associates and subsidiaries).

Prior to this appointment, Rajnish Kumar was the managing director and CEO of SBI Capital Markets (SBI Caps).

On his new assignment, Rajnish Kumar said he would look into compliance and risk, a new department which has been created for the first time by the bank, adding that the focus will be on technology upgradation.

Reports had suggested that for the fourth MD's post, four senior executives of the SBI group had been interviewed.

Apart from Kumar, those who had appeared for the interview were Praveen Kumar Gupta, SBI's chief financial officer, N.K. Chari, head of medium corporate group at SBI, and S.A. Ramesh Rangan, MD of the State Bank of Patiala.

Incidentally, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya had also served as the MD and CEO of SBI Caps in the past. Moreover, two former MDs of the bank- R. Shreedharan, S. Viswanathan and one serving MD - V.G. Kannan had also come from SBI Caps.