Vodafone India names Manish Dawar new CFO, to take over as Voda-Idea CFO head as well

NEW DELHI | MUMBAI: Vodafone India named Manish Dawar its new chief financial officer with effect January. He is likely to take on the role of finance head in the entity formed after the company’s merger with Idea Cellular.

Dawar was previously the CFO at cable TV company Den Networks. At the telecom operator, He will replace Thomas Reisten, who will return to parent Vodafone Group to take up a senior role after being the finance chief of the India operations for four years.

As per the agreement with Idea Cellular, Vodafone has the right on name the CFO of the merged entity. Sources in the know said Dawar will move to that role once the merger is closed. ET was first to report the development on ettelecom.com on Fridayafternoon.


While Vodafone and Idea did not comment on the appointment of Dawar as the CFO for merged entity, Vodafone India confirmed his move to the company.

“In these exciting times, he brings a rich experience of working across multiple industries and deep understanding of all aspects of finance,” said Sunil Sood, managing director of Vodafone India. For now, Dawar will report to Sood.

UK’s Vodafone Group and India’s diversified Aditya Birla Group are in the process of merging their local telecom units, Vodafone India and Idea, with equal ownership to create India's largest mobile phone company with about 400 million customers, a 35% customer market share and 41% revenue market share. The $23 billion merger announced on March 20 is expected to close in mid-2018.

The companies have so far got approval for the merger proposal from the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the Competition Commission of India, and are awaiting the clearance of the National Company Law Tribunal. After that, the last leg will be the approval of the telecom department.


While the merger agreement had given Vodafone the right to appoint the combined entity’s CFO, the companies had said that they would pick the best candidate for the chief executive’s job. Besides the decisions on the top executives, the two companies agreed that promoters of Idea and Vodafone would have the right to nominate three directors each on the board, which will have 12 members. Half the directors will be independent.