Top Berkshire Hathaway, Alibaba executives set to join Paytm board

Todd Combs, one of the top executives in legendary investor Warren Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway will join the payments platform giant, Paytm's board. Along with Combs, Yao Michael, SVP, head of corporate finance at Alibaba Group is also set to join the board. Michael will replace Joseph Tsai, founding member and executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group.

As Chief Investment Officer of the company, Combs led Berkshire Hathaway's $300 million investment in Paytm in August last year, as mentioned in a report in The Economic Times. Berkshire had, before that investment, kept away from technology investment but the Paytm deal was the first of its kind for the company.

An MBA from Columbia Business School, Combs joined Berkshire in 2010. He is also a member of the JP Morgan Chase board.

Yao Michael, a Chinese-American and Wharton School graduate, was hired by Alibaba in late 2012 as senior vice president, to head the corporate finance division.

An email query by the daily did not elicit any response from Berkshire Hathaway and Alibaba.

The current board members of Paytm include Ant Financial CEO Eric Jing, VC of Goldman Sachs Group and Chairman of Goldman Sachs in Asia Pacific Mark Schwartz, Ravi Adusumalli from SAIF Partners, Munish Verma, Managing Partner at SoftBank and Pallavi Shroff, Founder and Managing Partner of law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas.

Separately, Paytm is likely to acquire Mumbai-based digital insurance marketplace Coverfox in an all-cash deal for around $100-120 million. The digital payments company is reportedly in talks with Coverfox. If the deal goes through, it will be the largest acquisition for Paytm as the company is trying to make headway into the financial services segment through its subsidiary Paytm Money.

Also read: Paytm may acquire insurance marketplace Coverfox for around $120 million

Also read: Paytm Payments Bank posts profit of Rs 19 crore in FY'19