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Market pundits were stunned on Friday by the announcement that Chitra Ramkrishna was resigning as Managing Director and CEO of India’s largest stock exchange, the NSE.
The official statement cited “personal reasons” for the exit, but insiders said the move was an indication of differences between her and the board members over the way forward for the stock exchange, including the upcoming initial public offer.
Ramkrishna’s exit comes nearly 18 months ahead of the end of her five-year tenure: she was appointed in April 2013.
“Ramkrishna had tendered her resignation due to personal reasons and expressed her desire to step down with immediate effect,” said an NSE statement. The stock exchange appointed Group President J Ravichandran as interim CEO with immediate effect, and set up a selection committee to find a new chief.
Ramkrishna’s tenure was marked by allegations that NSE systems were manipulated to favour certain brokers on its algorithmic trading platform. Smaller shareholders had also alleged that the NSE management was delaying the IPO.
An informed market participantsaid Ramkrishna’s exit is another version of the Tata-Mistry fight. “It’s sad that such a capable person had to leave under such circumstances. For the past year, we had heard rumours of her disagreements with key board member about a proposal to diversify the exchange into newer businesses, make foreign acquisitions, make it a global exchange player with more technology integration. The other members just wanted to see returns on their investments.” BusinessLine could not verify the veracity of these disagreements.
Two senior executives in the mutual fund business said Ramkrishna saw mutual funds as a growing business segment. “She was the first to see potential in the ETF space and start pushing it as an investment option. The market became bigger due to the NSE’s efforts,” said one of the executives.
The other added: “Chitra was great at dealing with brokers, who are the most difficult people to deal with. She could convince them to trade entirely on the NSE. She once met with mutual fund distributors about growing their businesses, and offered concrete suggestions. A meeting scheduled for 45 minutes lasted two hours.”
Nithin Kamath, Founder and CEO, Zerodha, said Ramkrishna was open to leveraging technology. “With every new thing we built, we went to her for approvals and she was encouraging. Her exit is a loss for the industry,” he said.
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