L&T's A M Naik steps down as IIM-Ahmedabad chairman

MUMBAI: AM Naik has stepped down as chairman of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, less than a year after the Larsen & Toubro boss took up the position for a second straight term.

In a letter addressed to the human resources development ministry, Naik is understood to have cited time constraints behind his decision to quit, said a person aware of the matter.

The move has taken many in the academic circles by surprise given his huge interest and involvement in the growth of IIM-A.

Naik was unavailable for comment. An HRD ministry official said it received Naik's resignation some time back. The letter cited personal reasons and there hasn’t been any friction between the ministry and Naik, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"It was Mr Naik's judgement call that he is now unable to devote the same kind of time or energy to the institute like he did earlier. It has never been his style to do anything half way. The board requested him to continue but he had made up his mind given his time constraints", said Ashish Nanda, director, IIMA.

The draft IIM Bill, on which he among others had spoken out against, has already been reworked and is now agreeable to all IIMs, he said. Naik was the first chairman directly appointed by IIM-A as part of an agreement between the Centre and the institute.

In 2012, he took charge from Vijaypat Singhania of the Raymond Group. He was reappointed after the three year-term ended in February 2015.

IIM-A will now have to set up a committee to look for a new chairman. According to protocol, an institutional search committee will recommend three names to the HRD ministry.

The committee will be chaired by Naik – he remains chairman of the sub-committee of the board to help find a successor. Ashish Nanda, Pankaj R Patel of Cadila, Sanjay Lalbhai of Arvind Mills and Shiv Kumar of PepsiCo are its other members.

Since taking over at IIM-A in 2012, the L&T chairman was seriously involved in its affairs. In his first three-year term, 73-year-old tenaciously convinced Nanda to leave Harvard Law School and take charge of IIM-A as its first overseas director in the institute’s 52-yearold history.

Naik has been credited for his persistence in tackling the government bureaucracy to get the appointment ratified. It was this commitment to the institute that won him a second term as its chairman. Naik has been supporting Nanda in his attempts at making IIM-A more outward looking and a global management institute.