The banking industry in India has undergone many phases in its history; evolving from a regulated, decentralised system in the early 1800’s, to a regulated, centralised system during British rule, to a nationalised system following India’s independence, and finally a combination of a nationalised and private system adopting global standards as it currently stands. This study has two main aims. Firstly, it will assess the relationship between the firm-specific determinants of capital structure, based on the prevailing literature, and the capital structure of public and private sector banks in India. Secondly, it will determine whether there is a difference in the firm-specific factors that contribute to the determination of the capital structure of public sector banks and private sector banks. This study adopts quantitative methods, similar to previous studies on the relationship between capital structure and its firm-specific determinants. The dependent variable, being total leverage, is regressed against multiple independent variables, being profitability, growth, firm size and credit risk (hereinafter referred to as “risk” unless otherwise indicated) in a multivariate linear regression model. This study adds to the current literature by applying the same firm-specific independent variables to the case of private and public sector banks and then to evaluate and compare the similarities and differences between the regression outputs. The results show that for private sector banks, all independent variables are statistically significant in explaining total leverage, where all the independent variables conform to the current literature on capital structure – profitability (-), firm size (-), growth (+) and credit risk (-). Conversely, for public sector banks, all independent variables were considered to be statistically significant, except for credit risk – profitability (-), firm size (+) and growth (+). These results imply that credit risk is not an important determination in a nationalised banks’ capital structure; thus, providing evidence for the moral hazard theory of public sector banks.