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| Edited By: Praveena Sharma |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 18, 2018, 02:43 AM IST
Three chairmen, no chief operating officer, and no path-breaking steps. In the end, Infosys Technologies — rechristened Infosys Ltd on Saturday — stuck to form on the eve of its much-touted restructuring.
Sure, the company appointed a non-founder — KV Kamath, the man who transformed ICICI Bank — as the executive chairman of the board but preferred to maintain continuity by naming S Kris Gopalakrishnan, the current CEO and managing director, as the co-chairman. And no, NR Narayana Murthy is not exactly hanging up his boots. He has been named chairman emeritus from chairman and chief mentor. “I will be available to all Infoscians if they need me,” he said. The decisions are effective August 21.
Infosys also decided to accept the recommendation of the two-member nomination panel — consisting of Jeffery S Lehman and Deepak Satwalekar — of appointing current chief operating officer SD Shibulal as the chief executive officer (CEO) and MD in place of Gopalakishnan.
The appointments come after a year of rigorous selection process and controversy over the issue of nomination of founder and non-founder for the leadership role, which led to TV Mohandas Pai, human resources director of the company, resigning in a huff last month. After the announcement, Kamath said: “Taking Murthy’s position is not possible. One can only be the chairman of the board but one can never be Murthy. So I want that to be clear on that upfront.”
“The leaders we have at Infosys — Kris, Shibulal, and the leadership below them, both at the execution level and the operational level … they are all well-versed to face any challenges in context of transformation, in context of strategy and in the context of environment changes, to take Infosys to the next level. And at the board we will always be support these efforts on the part of the executive management,” Kamath said.
Infosys is also looking at inducting three members from the executive council as executive directors. A decision to this effect would be taken at the board meeting to be held on June 11.
“We need to strengthen both aspects, that is, our customer, employee and investor connect and adherence to world-class corporate governance. Keeping these twin objectives in mind, the nominations committee recommended and appointed KV Kamath and Kris Gopalakrishnan co-chairmen on the board,” Murthy said.
However, Lehman said the co-chairman structure was not a permanent one and was created only to suit the current situation.
Lehman said the decision on appointing a COO would be taken later.
“Based on the need of the day and the level of empowerment that people need to have, we may take a decision. Nothing is sacrosanct,” Murthy later told CNBC TV18.
Lehman also said the company has relaxed the retirement age of 65 years to 70 to align it with “modern corporate practice”.
Gopalakrishnan said Infosys will realign itself to version 3.0. The first twenty years of the company are seen as version 1.0, the 20-to-30 years as version 2.0.
“We are aligning all verticals along 3 lines — operate, transformation, innovate,” Gopalakrishnan said.
Murthy turns 65 years in August, while Kamath turns 64 in December.
“Two years ago, a decision was made that the 65 years mandatory retirement age was not consistent with modern practice where a lot of talent that a company like Infosys would want in a chairman was there is candidate going strong at 65. So we raised the age to 70 at that point in time. When you are considering who should be the chairman of the board, you do want people who have tremendous energy and certainly Kamath is an example of tremendous energy at 63 years,” he said.
