NSE To Appoint IDFC’s Vikram Limaye As Managing Director And CEO
NSE board selects Vikram Limaye as managing director and chief executive officer of the country’s largest exchange.
The board of directors of the National Stock Exchange, the country’s largest stock exchange, has approved the appointment of Vikram Limaye, current managing director and chief executive officer of IDFC Ltd., as the exchange’s next managing director and chief executive officer. The appointment, which is for a period of five years, is pending SEBI approval.
Limaye’s biography on the IDFC Ltd. website says he’s an MBA in Finance and Multinational Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked at Credit Suisse First Boston for eight years, in a variety of roles in investment banking, capital markets, structured finance and credit portfolio management, before returning to Mumbai India in 2004.
He has also been appointed as one of the four members of the governing body of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) by the Supreme Court.
Limaye’s first big responsibility at NSE will be to steer the exchange through its initial public offer, the prospectus for which was filed in December 2016.
HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh, also former chairman of IDFC, told BloombergQuint in an interview over the phone that Limaye was an “excellent” choice.
He is good choice, I have worked with him for many years. I think it is an excellent choice. NSE has got an excellent person with his background, with his experience. NSE is a running organisation and not a startup and his first task is to do an IPO. The NSE IPO is in the wings and he has done the IDFC IPO in recent years, he was totally involved in that. And he managed a number of IPOs of other companies through IDFC Capital. So, he is totally familiar with how to take the private company public, what are the regulations, what are the things are to be done.Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Ltd.
This new appointment was prompted by the sudden departure of Chitra Ramkrishna on December 2, 2016. Ramkrishna, who was part of the founding team at NSE, became joint managing director in September 2009 and was appointed managing director and chief executive officer on April 1, 2013. She quit the post citing ‘personal reasons’.
On her departure, NSE’s board of directors appointed Group President J Ravichandran to hold charge of the office of CEO while a selection committee was tasked with identifying the next leader.
The four-member selection committee comprised two external members, well-known business leader and Chairman of the Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra; and former RBI Deputy Governor Usha Thorat, and two NSE directors -- Dinesh Kanabar and TV Mohandas Pai. It called for applications via an advertisement and news agency PTI reported that more than 90 candidates applied. Thereafter, interviews were conducted and a candidate finalised.
In recent months, NSE has been beset by controversy. The exchange was accused by a whistleblower of preferential treatment to certain brokerages on the matter of co-location of servers in order to facilitate high-speed trading. On the direction of market regulator SEBI, NSE hired a firm, Deloitte, to conduct an audit. The audit found that the exchange’s systems are prone to manipulation,
Also Read: NSE’s Systems Prone To Manipulation, Says Deloitte
Besides this, the appointment of Subramanian Anand, his ascent to the position of group operating officer and his remuneration, the second highest at the exchange, were found to be lacking due process. A board inquiry was constituted but Anand resigned before its completion.
Also Read: Two Governance Controversies That May Have Prompted Chitra Ramkrishna’s Resignation
Limaye, besides leading the exchange through the IPO, will also have to help it recoup from these controversies.