Tamal Bandyopadhyay

Tamal Bandyopadhyay is an Indian business journalist, known for his weekly column on banking and finance Banker's Trust published in Mint, an Indian business daily brought out by HT Media Ltd in content sharing agreement with The Wall Street Journal of US. He has also authored two books namely A Bank for the Buck and Sahara: The Untold Story.^[1]

Life and career

A student of English Literature (a postgraduate from Calcutta University), Tamal Bandyopadhyay began his career in journalism as a Trainee Journalist with Times of India, in Mumbai in 1985. Subsequently, he has worked with four national financial dailies, including his current assignment as Deputy Managing Editor in Mint. He is also one of the members of the team that founded Mint in February 2007.

Before the current assignment, he had worked with The Economic Times, Business Standard and Financial Express. His immediate past assignment was with Business Standard, Mumbai, where he was Deputy Resident Editor.

He is popular for his weekly column on banking and finance called Banker's Trust which is published every Monday. His frequent blog Banker's Trust Real Time on www.livemint.com analyses major developments in the financial sector.^[2]

Between April and November 2011, he ran a 32 episode series on Bloomberg India TV, called Banker's Trust, where senior central bankers, commercial bankers and economists were interviewed every week.^[3]

Releasing Tamal's first book, A Bank for the Buck, in November 2012, then finance minister P Chidambaram said, "In a period of great financial illiteracy, it's refreshing to have a book written by somebody very literate about matters relating to finance". In his foreword to the book, former governor of Reserve Bank of India, YV Reddy, wrote, "It's a sort of recent oral history of a financial institution. Tamal has set a new trend in the dissemination of knowledge."^[4]

Tamal's second book, Sahara: the untold story, details the beginnings and the current day working of the secretive Sahara India Parivar.^[5] Well researched, with umpteen interviews with people concerned including Subroto Roy, the book was also cause of a stay order later requested by the Sahara group.

In December 2013, the Sahara India Pariwar, moved Calcutta High Court, got a stay on the publication of the book and filed a Rs 2 billion defamation suit against the author and its publisher, Jaico Publishing House.^[6] In April 2014, both the parties reached an out of court settlement following which the book will carry a disclaimer by Sahara which says, among other things, the book has "defamatory content".^[7] He has also published a book of poems in Bengali Anupam Meenrashi in January 2014. Tamal Bandyopadhyay is also a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Economic in India, edited by Kaushik Basu.^[8]

Bibliography

• A Bank for the Buck (2012)
• Anupam Meenrashi (2014)
• Sahara: The untold story (2014)

References