The board of directors of
Infosys on Saturday appointed KV Kamath as its new chairman, succeeding NR Narayana Murthy, who retires in August. Kamath is currently an independent director of the company and is also the non-executive chairman of the doard of directors of ICICI Bank.
In a major management revamp, Infosys also named the current CEO & MD S Gopalakrishnan as executive co-chairman while SD Shibulal, the current COO, would succeed Gopalakrishnan as CEO and MD.
All the new Infosys appointments would be effective from August 21, 2011. The Board of Directors unanimously invited Mr. N R Narayana Murthy to be the Chairman Emeritus effective August 21, 2011. This is in recognition of his founding the company, mentoring his co-founders, and nurturing the organization over the last thirty years.
The succession plans in the iconic company comes at a time when its not-so-exciting earning numbers have dampened the market expectations, while rivals like Tata Consultancy Services and HCL Technologies posted stellar results.
Infosys registered lesser-than-expected 13.6 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 1,818 crore for in the last quarter of the previous fiscal.
TCS and HCL Technologies, on the other hand, posted 31.1 per cent jump (Q4 FY'11) and 33 per cent (Q3 FY'11), respectively.
The industry and markets have been keenly awaiting the succession plans at Infosys.
Murthy had stepped down as CEO in 2002, handing over office to co-founder Nandan Nilekani. Nilekani left the company in 2007 to join the Unique Identification Authority of India. Current CEO Gopalakrishnan took over the reins from Nilekani.
Infosys had formed a nominations committee, comprising Professor Jeffery S Lehman, Deepak M Satwalekar (former MD and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance) and KV Kamath (non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICICI Bank).
KV Kamath, new chairman of Infosys 
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