Diversified group ITC is taking steps to elevate its COO Sanjiv Puri as Chief Executive Officer and plans to split the post of Executive Chairman and CEO after incumbent Y C Deveshwar steps aside on February 5.
In a regulatory filing ITC has said that its Nomination and Compensation Committee at its meeting on January 27 will take up the matter “in the context of splitting up the role of the Executive Chairman of the company between Chairman and Chief Executive Officer with effect from February 5, 2017.”
It will also “consider and recommend to the board of directors the appointment of Sanjiv Puri as CEO of the company with effect from that date.”
The said agenda has been circulated to the committee members, it added.
In July last year, Puri was appointed as the chief operating officer (COO) after leading the FMCG business of the conglomerate as President from December 2014. He had joined the company in 1986.
His appointment as COO followed the company’s announcement a month earlier that Deveshwar would step aside on February 5, 2017 as Executive Chairman and CEO, posts he held for 20 years.
Deveshwar would become a non-Executive Director and Chairman for a period of three years with effect from February 5, 2017, it had said.
He joined ITC in 1968 and assumed office as Executive Chairman in January, 1996. His re—appointment as a Director and also as Wholetime Director and Chairman for a period of five years with effect from February 5, 2012 was approved in the company’s AGM in July, 2011.
