SAURABH AGRAWAL TO TAKE CHARGE AS TATA SONS CFO

MUMBAI: Saurabh Agrawal, 48, head of corporate strategy at the Aditya Birla group, has been appointed the group chief financial officer of Tata Sons, the company said on Monday.

He will join the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate from July 2017, the statement said.

Agrawal, who has been with the Aditya Birla group since April 2016, will bring to the $103billion group the experience of having steered the biggest merger and acquisition transaction in the country—the merger of Idea Cellular Ltd with Vodafone Plc, a deal worth $23 billion.

He has also been instrumental in pushing through UltraTech Cement’s acquisition of Jaiprakash Associate Ltd’s cement assets and also the restructuring of Grasim Ltd and Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd.

Experts said that his appointment of someone with his background and experience will help the group plan capital allocation better.

“Getting adequate returns from the investments made in the group companies has been one of the biggest worries for Tata Sons. Some one with a corporate strategy background will help and will be able to drive the much needed financial discipline at the group level,” said Kavil Ramachandran, executive director, Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at Indian School of Business.

In his first letter to the group after taking charge as chairman, N Chandrasekaran had talked about bringing greater rigour to capital allocation and delivering superior returns to shareholders.