Changes at Wipro board

NEW DELHI: India���s third largest IT services company Wipro Technologies is all set to announce changes in its board on Friday. ET has learnt that chairman Azim Premji will announce three top level changes in the board post the announcement of its annual results along with new roles for many of its vertical heads in the coming weeks.

According to sources, IT Practices president and Wipro Infotech president Suresh Vaswani along with Finance Solutions president Girish S Paranjpe and chief financial officer Suresh Senapathy will be inducted into the board. The current Wipro BPO chief T Kurien might also be moved to new responsibilities, sources added.

The restructuring of the executive team and board will be the first significant one in many years after Vivek Paul, ex-Wipro president left in 2005. It will also give more power to the executive team to take key decisions in the wake of the current US slowdown and flux in the IT market.

ET had already reported this month the likely induction of Suresh Vaswani as president and vice chairman Wipro. The likely induction will obviously create some vacancies at Wipro Infotech for the top job. It remains to be seen today on whom will Mr Premji pass the mantle on.

While Girish Paranjpe is a chartered accountant and a graduate from Sydhenam College, Mumbai who has worked with Wipro for more than 13 years.Suresh Vaswani is an engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, and a management graduate from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and is associated with the company since 1985.

The respective executive team members were not part of the Wipro board earlier which constitutes celebrity directors like N Vaghul, chairman of the board of ICICI Limited and William Arthur Bill Owens, ex-CEO and vice chairman, Nortel and and former CEO of Teledesic.

Other members of the board are Jagadish N Seth, Head, Chair of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and an academic luminary at University of Southern California, Columbia University and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Other members of the current board are Ashok Ganguly and PM Sinha.