Big CEO churn in the offing for India Inc: Experts

NEW DELHI: The current year has witnessed a lot of shuffling at leadership level positions of companies and going forward sectors such as technology, financial services, power and energy are likely to see some movements in the top brass, say experts.

India has witnessed a slew of movements in the top rung of the companies. Some of the examples of such changes are Bhaskar Pramanik of Microsoft India, Rajan Anandan of Google India, Rajesh Kamat of CA Media, S D Shibulal of Infosys and TK Kurien of Wipro.

"The current year has already shown a lot of churn at CEO and leadership level, the reason being retention challenges confronted by companies, opportunities available in market and high growth expectations of professionals," executive search firm GlobalHunt Director Sunil Goel said.

According to leadership talent solutions firm Aventus Partners' founding partner Venkatnarayan V Iyer: "IT, Financial Services, Infrastructure and Oil & Gas will see CEO transitions happening over the period of the next year".

To ensure smooth transitions the company must groom the talent pool and if the need arises, the company should be open to attract and absorb talent from outside -- from local and global markets, believe experts.

Explaining the various factors behind this CEO churn, Iyer said a CEO can be replaced for bad performance of the company (Wipro), or in a bad economy the CEO can be replaced for reasons of non performance. Another factor is retirement of the incumbent (K V Kamath at ICICI Bank and Gopalakrishnan at Infosys).

Iyer further added that on account of the economic meltdown, boards tended to hold on to CEO transitions, better to have a strong incumbent who knows the company, clients and markets worldwide and is better equipped to handle the downside of the effects of the slowdown.

"Since the markets are now picking up slowly, in places like India, it is easier to get the CEO transitions going," Iyer said.