Future Retail, Bharti Retail boards revamped

A year after the acquisition of Bharti Retail, Future Group has reconstituted the boards of Future Retail and Bharti Retail. Kishore Biyani and Rakesh Biyani have joined the board of directors and will serve as the Managing Director and Joint Managing Director, respectively, as the entire retail operations have moved in this company.

Future Group has given effect to the scheme of arrangement between Future Retail Ltd and Bharti Retail Ltd for acquisition of the retail operations of Bharti Group.  The scheme has been brought into effect on May 1.  Accordingly, the Boards of the two companies have been reconstituted to ensure proper representation of promoters and the professional Board.

Rajan Mittal, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises Ltd, will continue to serve as a member of the board. Joining the board as independent directors are industry leaders Ravi Dhariwal, Gagan Singh and Shailendra Bhandari.

Ravi Dhariwal, till recently served as the Chief Executive Officer with Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, and prior to that was associated with PepsiCo. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to private equity firm TPG Growth. He brings on board his experience in strategy, organisational development, marketing and brand management.

Gagan Singh currently serves as the CEO-Business at JLL India and is the chairperson of the firm's Sri Lanka operations, and prior to this, she was Executive Director in Benetton India and had been in responsible positions in few MNCs, with expertise in operations and real estate. Shailendra Bhandari is the former Managing Director and CEO of ING Vysya Bank and MD and CEO of Centurion Bank of Punjab. He has also served as the head of private equity at Tata Capital and as Executive Director at HDFC Bank.

CP Toshniwal, a Future Group veteran, has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the company.

Together with the aforesaid reconstitution of Bharti Retail, Kishore Biyani steps down as Managing Director of Future Retail, however, he will continue to be part of the Future Retail Board and Rakesh Biyani steps down as Joint Managing Director of Future Retail. Vijay Biyani continues as Executive Director at Future Retail.

During the past year, Future Retail and Bharti Retail have integrated the front-end operations of their retail businesses. The company now operates some retail brands, including Big Bazaar, EasyDay, fbb, Foodhall, Home Town and eZone.

As part of the merger, the back-end infrastructure of Bharti Retail is being merged with the back-end infrastructure of Future Retail.

This entity will own and manage the back-end retail infrastructure for operating the vast retail network as well as the investments in various Future Group companies.

As part of this merger, Bharti Retail will be listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the BSE. The record date to ascertain the entitlement of Future Retail shareholders to receive Bharti Retail shares has been fixed as May 12.

Subsequent to allotment of shares, the company will be submitting the application for listing by month-end. Future Retail continues to be listed on both these exchanges.

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