Sanjay Sinha quits L&T MF as CEO

Fund house witnessing mass exits at the top for a year

BS REPORTER Mumbai, 30 August

L&T Mutual Fund, a new entrant in the domestic fund industry, has failed to apply brakes on the exodus of its top executives. After a series of exits, now it was the turn of the chief executive officer (CEO), Sanjay Sinha, to put in his papers. The move comes barely two years after L&T entered the fund management business. Ashutosh Bishnoi, former executive director of UTI Mutual Fund, will supervise the operations of the company till the search for a new CEO is over. N Sivaraman, president & whole time director of L&T Finance Holdings, said: The selection

panel for the new CEO has been Deutsche Bank. Earlier, Deepconstituted and a search (for a ak Mehta, national head, retail sales, put in his papers to join CEO) is underway. It could not be independent- UTI AMC. In November 2010, Jude ly verified where Sinha was Abraham, who headed. Accordhandled instituing to industry tional sales for insiders, he is the western and likely to join Insouthern redia Infoline gions, joined AMC. will supervise the Taurus MF as Earlier this national head of year, chief mar- operations of the institutional sales. keting officer company till the search Rajesh Singh, alMohit Sachdev for a new CEO is over so a part of the moved out of the organisation to join SREI Asset institutional sales team, left L&T Management Company as the MF around the same time. Bachief executive officer. In Oc- jrang Bafna and Dinesh Ahuja, tober last year, Anish Shah, who were managing equity and vice-president, finance and op- debt schemes, respectively, are erations, had quit to join also among those who moved

ASHUTOSH BISHNOI, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF UTI MF,

out of the AMC last year. Sinha previously headed DBS Cholamandalam AMC. Prior to it, he was associated with SBI Mutual Fund. L&T Finance forayed into the MF business in September 2009 after acquiring DBS Cholamandalam AMC for `45 crore. The company had assets worth `2,893 crore at the end of August 2009. DBS Cholamandalam AMC was later rechristened as L&T MF. Back then, L&T Finance had retained the CEO of DBS Cholamandalam AMC, Sinha, and his entire team of 80 members. For the quarter ended June, L&T MFs average assets under management (AUM) stood at `5,214.7 crore, up 29.4 per cent compared with March 2011.