Top Walmart executives to join Flipkart: Report

Three months after retail giant Walmart announced the acquisition of Flipkart, four senior executives from the US-based company will join the e-commerce firm, said a report.

The Economic Times (ET) on Tuesday reported the development, quoting an email sent by Flipkart Group chief executive Binny Bansal to employees.

Emily McNeal, the global head of mergers and acquisitions at Walmart, will join Flipkart Group as senior vice-president and group chief financial officer.

Other executives who will be joining Flipkart are Daniel De La Garza, Grant Coad and Dawn Ptak.

The ET report said that Garza will join Flipkart as vice-president and chief ethics & compliance officer, Coad as general counsel, and Ptak as vice-president and group controller.

Garza is now the chief ethics and compliance officer for Central America for Walmart; Coad is currently the vice-president of regulatory compliance in Canada; and Ptak is associated with Walmart China as vice-president and controller.

Emails to Walmart and Flipkart did not get any reply till the time of publishing this report.

Going by the ET report, Bansal in the email said that the expertise of these executives “will be immensely valuable in giving a major boost” for Flipkart’s growth and compliance.

In May, Walmart had announced that it will be buying a majority stake in Flipkart for $16 billion.

The deal valued Singapore-headquartered Flipkart at over $20 billion.

Last month, the deal was approved by India’s anti-monopoly body -- the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

The proposed deal “is not likely to have an appreciable adverse effect on competition” in India, the Competition Commission of India had said in a 12-page order.

The CCI noted that both Walmart and Flipkart operated in the business-to-business (B2B) segment of India’s overall retail industry. After examining the transaction and the industry structure, the regulator concluded that the deal was not likely to have any adverse impact on competition irrespective of the whether the market is taken as all B2B sales or narrower B2B markets on the basis of a particular category of product sold by the two companies.

The deal was, however, opposed by a section of traders and retailers. In late May, the Confederation of All India Traders had filed an objection to the deal with CCI and raised concerns about losing business if the transaction went through.

The world’s biggest bricks-and-mortar retailer Walmart hopes the deal will give a leg-up to its international business and will help it rival Amazon.