Sucheta Dalal writes: Mr Murthy and his protégé Nandan Nilekani have always been clever about managing their image. Consider this anecdote of 2005, just two years after the Narayana Murthy Committee had submitted its report to the Securities & Exchange Board of India NR Narayana Murthy’s return as executive chairman is seen as so positive for Infosys that any talk about the serious breach of good governance norms in the manner of his return, or the appointment of his son, is seen as needless criticism. Well, Mr Murthy and his protégé Nandan Nilekani have always been clever about managing their image. Consider this anecdote of 2005, just two years after the Narayana Murthy committee had submitted its report to the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Janardhan Kothari of Kolkata, wrote to me expressing his ‘shock’ and ‘surprise’ that NRN Murthy, as an independent director of NDTV Limited had not attended a single board meeting in his first year. I forwarded the email to Mr Murthy asking if it were true. His response: “That is right. I am guilty. I had told them that my diary gets full a year in advance. I do not cancel appointments once made. That is why I could not attend the meetings. This year, I have attended all the meetings.” This candour hides the fact that this is a complete violation of the corporate governance code, which places enormous responsibility on independent directors. Couldn’t Mr Murthy have joined the NDTV board a year later? Well, because NDTV was going public and having Mr Murthy on the board before its initial public offering (IPO) would help it extract a good premium from investors. NDTV repaid this debt in full when Mr Murthy was under serious attack from a vengeful HD Deve Gowda government in
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:06:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015