Mindtree approves appointment of 3 L&T nominees as board directors

Company News

In the mid of an open offer process, Mindtree board on Thursday approved the appointment of L&T’s nominees as directors, which included the engineering major’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director S N Subrahmanyan and its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ramamurthi Shankar Raman, among others.
In an exchange filing, the IT firm said its board had approved induction of five new directors into the company’s board, which will come for shareholders’ approval in its next annual general meeting on July 16. Apart from CEO and CFO of L&T, Jayant Damodar Patil, whole time director and senior executive vice-president for L&T’s defence business, will also be part of the firm’s board.
All the three L&T nominees will come as non-executive directors.Apart from induction of non-executive director, two independent directors will also be part of the Mindtree board. Its nomination and remuneration committee has also approved appointment of Prasanna Rangacharya and Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa as independent directors. While Rangacharya is a legal consultant, who had served as a chief legal advisor of L&T between 1991 and 1998, Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa is a former diplomat.
While five new directors’ appointment will come for approval in the next board meet, Mindtree's co-founder and non-executive director Subroto Bagchi will not seek reappointment. “Subroto Bagchi, who retires by rotation at the 20th AGM on July 16, has not offered re-appointment for himself,” the filing said.With this rejig, Mindtree’s board will now have 12 board members from eight.

 Though Bagchi will step down from non-executive role, it was uncertain whether other three founders — Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan, N S Parthasarathy — will also consider stepping down from the board in the future.

Was offered bags of money to give Mindtree away, CEO Subroto tells staff

Company News

Ahead of MindTree board meet on Wednesday, Mindtree founding promoter Subroto Bagchi said he and three other promoters — Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan, and Parthasarathy NS — were offered “huge bags of money” to give away Mindtree but they turned it down and urged employees to remain focused on work. In a letter, Bagchi attempted to reach out to the employees with an emotional plea urging them to 'stay focused on what must go out of the door today.'

On Tuesday, co-founders of the company, Subroto Bagchi, Krishnakumar Natarjan and Rostow Ravanan univocally called the takeover bid 'a grave threat to the unique organisation collectively built over 20 years'.

Here's FULL TEXT of Subroto Bagchi's letter to MindTree employees

My very dear Mindtree Minds,

I have never written to you in the last three years. Hence it may be somewhat of a surprise for you. Of course, there are attendant, unusual circumstances; of an imminent threat to Mindtree’s independence that has made me to write to you today. Please be patient with me because this is going to be a long letter, the situation asks for it. But first, I must give you a context that goes well beyond Mindtree.

 In 1994, after setting up Wipro’s Global R&D in the Silicon Valley, I came back to India. Wipro’s R&D had the best people, working on mission critical applications for India because a lot of technology was banned for export to India at the time.

Yet, Indian economy was opening up and global IT companies were suddenly coming into India, threatening the very existence of the same R&D that had worked on India’s space and defence needs. There was only one way to save it. Grow it beyond Indian shores. Make it world-class...Read More