Piyush Gupta bows out as DBS Bank CEO after leadership for 15 years

The stepping down of Piyush Gupta from the post of CEO of DBS Bank came after 15 years of leading the bank with much innovation, expansion, and record successes. Under such leadership, DBS became one of the world’s best digital banks, which is recognized with myriad global awards.

He was appointed as CEO of DBS in 2009. His contributions included bringing the whole owned branch of DBS Bank in India, besides several other important geographical expansions. His acumen catapulted DBS to phenomenal financial results with record profits of SGD 11.4 billion in 2024. By the end of the year, the valued capitalization of the bank was beyond SGD 124 billion in market capitalization, thereby making DBS the first company to cross SGD 100 billion in market capitalization from the Singapore list. Since he took charge of the bank, the price of DBS shares soared more than 280 percent.

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A New Era of Leadership

He will be succeeded by Tan Su Shan, who is the first female CEO of DBS. She has been the Deputy CEO of the bank with a very strong reputation of wealth management and global banking strategies. Thereby, the bank assured continuity in growth for Temasek Holdings, being a major shareholder of DBS.

Highs and lows: Gupta’s career

Such successes were also not without the downsides. To start with, DBS saw many digital banking disruptions in 2023, much to the dismay of Gupta’s pay, which was cut by 27%. This reduced pay, however, bounced back in 2024 to SGD 17.6 million due to the better performance of the bank.

On this positive note, he leaves having built DBS into Southeast Asia’s largest bank in terms of assets and a strong player in digital banking innovation. And, with the leadership change at DBS, the bank is poised to continue its growth momentum towards global expansion, technology development, and financial excellence.