Mindtree approves founder promoters’ request to be reclassified public shareholders

The Mindtree board has approved a request from its founders and their family members to be reclassified from promoters to public shareholders. The company has also appointed Senthil Kumar as the interim CFO.

The request from promoters Subroto Bagchi, Krishnakumar Natarajan, NS Parthasarathy and Rostow Ravanan comes months after the hostile takeover of the Bengaluru headquartered information technology (IT) services firm from engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro.

However, this move has to be approved by regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to take effect, the company said in a disclosure to stock exchanges.

"We would like to inform that the board of directors at its meeting held on March 11, 2020, has considered and approved the requests received from the below promoters and persons related to promoters, for reclassifying them from 'promoter/promoter group' to 'public category'," the communication said.

The request from the Mindtree's founder promoters was pending for a few months but could not be taken up as SEBI's regulation insists that their shareholding should be lower 10% to do so. 

Also, the decision was taken since the founders do not have control over the affairs of the company or in any decision-making process of the company.

The decision will be effective from the subsequent quarter after the approval from SEBI, the filing to the exchanges said.

According to Mindtree, it is in the process of finding a new CFO as the company's previous CFO Pradip Kumar Menon left the firm last November. 

Kumar, who has worked at Mindtree for eight years, is currently the associate vice president and finance controller, the company said in a disclosure to stock markets. 

He is a qualified chartered accountant and has held various leadership roles in the finance department. Kumar has 16 years of experience in handling various functions in financial planning, treasury, taxation and financial reporting, Mindtree said.

Last week, Mindtree appointed former Accenture executive Dayapatra Nevatia as its chief operations officer, eight months after Parthasarathy NS left the post.