Sanjiv Goenka appointed chairman of FSL

Sanjeev Goenka has been appointed chairman of BPO service provider Firstsource Solutions (FSL), which has been acquired by CESC Ltd through a wholly-owned subsidiary.

"On December 3, I was inducted as chairman of Firstsource Solutions," CESC Ltd vice-chairman Sanjeev Goenka told reporters. Sailesh Mehta had ceased to be the chairman of FSL but continued as an independent director. Shashwat Goenka has joined the FSL Board, along with CESC executive director Subrata Talukdar and Heigreve Khaitan.

"The directors who resigned from FSL Board on December 5 were Pravir Vohra, Mohit Bhandari and Ram Chary," he said. In October, the RP Sanjeev Goenka Group had announced it was venturing into the business process operations space with the acquisition of 34.5 percent stake in FSL. SpenLiq Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group's CESC Ltd, has entered into an agreement with FSL to subscribe to 34.5 per cent of FSL's expanded share capital. Goenka added that FSL has fully repaid its outstanding FCCB liability of USD 237 million on December 4 this year.

The repayment was funded by the company's cash resources, augmented with shareholders' money made available by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, as also external borrowings. "We feel that this repayment is an important landmark for the company. We also feel, FSL has been a significant strategic acquisition for CESC. We have the faith to steer FSL to the next phase of growth and profitability," he said.

FSL has a network of 48 delivery centres spread globally across USA, UK, Australia, Ireland, Philippines, Sri Lanka and India and is provider of services for banking and financial sectors, telecommunication & media and the healthcare industry.

"I am bullish about FSL's contribution to the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which currently has Rs 14,000 crore assets under its management, a combined revenue of Rs 10,000 crore and EBIDTA of Rs 1,450 crore." "The FSL acquisition boosts RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group's revenues by Rs 2250 crore, adds significantly to the Group's profits and trebles employee strength from 16000 to 48000," he said.