Kalpana Morparia, the high profile banking official who had been serving ICICI Bank for the past 33 years has resigned to join J.P.Morgan. She has been appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the firm's Indian operations.

Ms. Morparia, who started her career with ICICI Ltd in 1975 in their legal department was seen as the legal brain behind various deals and structures, which led to the creation of the present ICICI Bank. These included the acquisition of a host of finance companies leading to the reverse merger of ICICI with ICICI Bank. Even after the merger, ICICI continued its acquisition spree, adding Bank of Madura and Sangli Bank to its fold.

Morparia was also ICICI's vice-chair for insurance, securities, asset management and a director of several subsidiaries of the financial services powerhouse. She retired from the board of directors of ICICI Bank in 2007 after which she took up her current role.

She was ICICI's public face at various global meetings, which included interactions with potential investors and was also at the forefront of bad debt resolution in the institution.

Since 2007, she has focused on guiding the group's insurance, asset management and securities businesses.

On the marked occasion, the lady said, "I will miss ICICI Bank. It is a part of me and I have worked here for 33 years. But we must move on." She added: "The times are not really that challenging, on the contrary, they are very exciting."

Ms Morparia's job as a CEO in J.P. Morgan will include membership of J.P.Morgan's Asia Pacific Executive Committee and involvement in the development of several global initiatives being led from the firm's New York office. An agency report quoted the lady saying, "JP Morgan has established a strong and highly respected franchise in India which will support plans to expand all three lines of business -investment banking, asset wealth management and treasury and securities services."

Kalpana Morparia will replace Dominic Price, who is leaving to run JPMorgan's Vietnam operations. Gaby Abdelnour, chief executive of JP Morgan Asia Pacific, said that the "appointment of Kalpana Morparia as chief executive officer for Indian operations offers JP Morgan a tremendous opportunity to accelerate the progress we have made in building our Indian franchise."

It comes at an increasingly challenging time for investment banks in India, which have been expanding staff in anticipation of rapid growth in what only two years ago was still a small market.