Successful succession

At a time when several family enterprises in India have been struggling to effect succession planning and division of business amicably among their members, the Godrej group has cordially split the business into two without any hassles.

The split clearly reflects the fact that the family adopted a business-first approach while trying to accommodate the ambitions of the next generation.

As a country where 350 out of 500 top-listed companies are family-owned, it is incumbent upon them to devise a cordial succession plan years in advance of a forced reckoning.

M Jeyaram

Sholavandan (TN)

Insurance mis-selling

This refers to the ‘Fixing mis-selling in life insurance’ (May 7). Despite the progress of financial inclusion, people are largely unfamiliar with insurance products.

Insurers are marketing various types of policies without having adequate knowledge, so the products are being marketed sans explaining the utilities to the purchaser.

Agents and banks are under pressure to aggressively market the products. The buyers of the products are unaware of the risks associated with the products and are incurring losses.

The regulators and the government must advise the parties to desist from such practices.

VSK Pillai

Changanacherry

Valuable memoirs

Apropos to news report, central bankers writing memoirs after retirement is a welcome step as their accounts are immensely valuable.

With the exception of perhaps Dr C Rangarajan and Dr YV Reddy, the RBI Governors in recent times didn’t come with central banking background. This aspect was more than made up by the in-house team which had stalwarts like SS Tarapore, Shyamala Gopinath and Usha Thorat. The present and future governors will get an insight about the tightrope walking that the RBI has to do from the books of Bimal Jalan, YV Reddy and Duvvuri Subbarao.

MG Warrier

Mumbai

Start-up governance

This refers to “Start-ups need a curated corporate governance framework “(May 7). It is disheartening to note that only 20 per cent of the start-ups could survive beyond five years and 8 per cent beyond 10 years, due to poor governance standards.

While the massive scaling up is blamed for their unsustainability, the core issues arise from their poor understanding of the contractual documents of investors, valuation greediness of promoters, and inability in retaining skilled manpower.

Start-ups need to put in place robust governance and risk management standards along with a whistle blowing framework to flag serious irregularities.

Sitaram Popuri

Bengaluru

comment COMMENT NOW