Mumbai: HDFC Bank's managing director Aditya Puri has been ranked as India's Best CEO (overall) in Finance Asia magazine's annual poll of investors and analysts.

Puri beat peers like Infosys Technology, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries to take the top spot in this year's poll.

Finance Asia conducts annual polls to rank Asia's top companies in different categories, including those with the Best CEO.

In the 'best managed company' category, HDFC Bank ranked third  behind Infosys Technology and Bharti Airtel but ahead of Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Industries, and Tata Consultancy.

In the 'best corporate governance' category, HDFC Bank ranked at the second spot behind Infosys Technologies but ahead of Bharti Airtel, L&T, and Tata Consultancy, who ranked third, fourth and fifth respectively.

HDFC Bank ranked third in the 'best investor relations' category, behind Infosys and Bharti (in that order).

In the backdrop of the economic gloom all over, last 12 months have been anything but easy for Indian CEOs. However, Puri is credited with having kept the bank largely insulated from the fallout of the global bank-collapses driven slowdown.

For the year ended 31 March 2009, HDFC Bank posted a 41 per cent rise in its net profit at Rs2,245 crore, and a 63-per cent rise in total income at Rs19,623 crore.  It also almost doubled its branch network in the year ended 31 March, ending the year with 1,412 branches, more than any other private sector bank in India.

Earlier in February this year, Puri qualified for CNN IBN's 'Indian of the yeari in the business category, and the 'banker of the year' in December 2008 by Business Standard newspaper, just a month after Business India magazine had declared HDFC Bank as the best bank. Earlier in year, HDFC Bank was ranked in the Forbes' 50 best companies in Asia Pacific list.

Promoted in 1995 by housing financier HDFC Ltd, HDFC Bank is the country's second-largest new generation private sector bank, behind rival ICICI Bank.