Heard on the Street: AMC board hauls up CEO for top-level exits

Tension is brewing at a mid-sized fund house promoted by one of India’s leading industrial houses. The asset management company (AMC)’s board is said to have pulled up its chief executive officer for ‘inappropriate handling of employees’.

According to sources, the CEO has been blamed for the exit of several senior-level officials — including some key fund managers — and the retrenchment of several junior-level employees. The back-to-back restructuring of key sales and marketing personnel in the fund house has also raised a lot of hackles, sources said.

The board is said to be looking into these alleged complaints after the fund house fared badly in a recently-conducted HR survey, sources said. It is learnt that the board has given strict warning to the CEO not to “fire” any employee of the fund house without the chairman’s approval.

The board chairman has also wrested budgetary control of the fund house, sources said. The chief executive has also been accused of empanelling his own set of favourite brokers and “irregular meddling” in fund management activities.