Mindtree's board has appointed five new directors, including SN Subrahmanyan, L&T CEO and Managing Director.
Co-founder Subroto Bagchi, who retires on July 16, 2019, has not offered to be re-appointed, according to the recent BSE filing.
Except for Bagchi, there is no clarity on whether other founders Rostow Ravanan, CEO, Krishnakumar Natarajan, Chairman and NS Parthasarathy, will continue to be board of directors. The story will be updated once the response is received from Mindtree.
Subrahmanyan is appointed as the non-executive director. The other new board members include Jayant Damodar Patil, who is appointed non-executive director. Patil is the whole time director in L&T and Senior Executive Vice President for L&T's Defence Business. Ramamurthi Shankar Raman, who has been appointed non-executive director, is the whole time director and chief financial officer in L&T.
Prasanna Rangacharya Mysore, Independent Director of Mindtree, is a legal consultant. He served as chief legal advisor of L&T between 1991 and 1998.
Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa, another newly appointed independent director, was a diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service.
Their tenure begins on July 16.
While the term of two independent directors will be till March 2022 and July 2024 for Mysore and Wadhwa respectively, the term for the three non-executive directors was not mentioned.
As per information filed at Bombay Stock Exchange, the incumbent executive board members are: founders Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan, NS Parthasarathy and Subroto Bagchi. The four independent directors were Apurva Purohit, Milind Sawarte, Akshaya Bhargava and Bijou Kurien.
L&T’s open offer to buy 31 percent Mindtree shares commenced on June 17 and will end on June 28. With the additional 31 percent stake at the investment of Rs 5,000 crore for the open offer, the engineering behemoth is looking to up its stake in the IT firm to 66.32 percent.
In India’s first-ever hostile takeover bid in the IT space, L&T signed a definitive agreement to acquire 20.32 percent from VG Siddhartha and his coffee enterprise for over Rs 3,000 crore on March 18. The deal was formalised late April.
In March, L&T said it would increase its stake to 66.32 percent through an open offer for 31 percent and an open market purchase of 15 percent. This puts the total value of the acquisition at Rs 10,700 crore or Rs 980 per share. On June 6, the company upped its stake in Mindtree to 28.90 percent.
