Invite Nilekani to join Infosys board: Domestic investors

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SME Times News Bureau | 24 Aug, 2017
Smarting from the fallout of boardroom battles in the software major Infosys on their investments in its stock, a dozen leading domestic institutional investors (DIIs) on Wednesday urged the company to invite its co-founder Nandan Nilekani to join the Board.

"After considerable thought and mutual deliberations, we strongly feel that the Board of Infosys should invite Nandan Nilekani to join it in a suitable capacity," said the DIIs in a letter, accessed by IANS here.

As the IT major's institutional shareholders, they told the Board that the recent developments were of much concern to each of them.

"In our opinion, he (Nilekani) enjoys the confidence of various stakeholders, including customers, shareholders and employees," said the investors in the joint letter.

As one of the original seven co-founders of the $10 billion software firm, 62-year-old Nilekani left the company in 2009 as Vice-Chairman to join the state-run Unique Identification Authority of India as its first Chairman.

"Given Nilekani's credentials, we feel that his joining the Board at this stage will restore confidence of the stakeholders in the company and facilitate resolution of the contentious issues that it is facing presently," they said in the letter.

"We do hope that Nilekani will consider the invite and do the needful," added the statement.

The investors who signed the letter are Franklin Templeton Chief Information Officer Anand Radhakrishnan, IDFC AMC (equities) Head Anoop Bhaskar, DSP Blackrock Investment Managers' CIO Anup Maheshwari, SBI Life Insurance CIO Gopikrishna Shenoy, Birla Sunlife AMC Co-CIO Mahesh Patil, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance CIO Manish Kumar, SBI Funds Management Executive Director Navneet Munot, Kotak Mahindra AMC CEO Nilesh Shah, HDFC AMC Executive Director Prashant Jain, and HDFC Life Insurance CIO Prasun Gajri.

Sources hinted that State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya may also join the Board.

Infosys, however, did not confirm receiving such a letter from the DIIs and Nilekani was not available to comment.

"We do not have updates at this point of time. In case of any development, we will inform the media in due course," said the company in a statement to IANS.

The company also said it would not comment on speculation and rumours.