Mindtree chief financial officer Pradip Menon resigns in latest exit after L&T takeover

Bengaluru-based information technology services firm Mindtree's chief financial officer Pradip Kumar Menon has resigned after a short stint of 13 months at the company. 

Menon's last day at Mindtree will be November 15, the company said in a statement to Bombay Stock Exchange. Menon was a Unilever veteran, spending close to 20 years at the FMCG firm, working across locations like Singapore, Dubai and Zurich, Switzerland.

Menon was appointed by the previous regime under the founder-promoters. The churn was expected as new management took over the IT firm after engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro acquired the company in one of the most high-profile hostile takeovers in the country. Evidently, Menon stayed put to oversee the management transition.

L&T is expected to replace Menon with someone from its ranks. L&T group chairman AM Naik is the non-executive chairman of Mindtree. 

"Pradip Kumar Menon will be relieved from the services of the Company from the close of business hours on November 15,2019. The company is in the process of taking necessary steps to fill the vacancy caused by the above," the statement said.

In August, Mindtree had named Former Cognizant president Debashis Chatterjee as its chief executive after co-founder Rostow Ravanan stepped down from that role after the L & T takeover.  

The founder-promoters had protested the acquisition, saying that it would not benefit the company shareholders as well as kill its open culture.

During the same time, Mindtree’s founders, Subroto Bagchi, Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan and NS Parthasarathy, wrote to market regulator Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) to remove them from their promoter positions. July 31 was the last day for Natarajan, Parthasarathy and Ravanan at the company.

Mindtree’s acquisition was precipitated by the sale of shares by its largest shareholder, Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha, who allegedly committed suicide in late July amid mounting debt-related problems.