Rajiv Bansal’s severance pay is nothing unusual: Infosys
India’s second-largest software services exporter, Infosys, on Tuesday said the severance pay agreement with former finance head Rajiv Bansal is executed in line with the rights and obligations of the parties involved.
“The severance agreement with Rajiv Bansal, ex-CFO includes rights and obligations of the parties, usual for such type of agreements. The agreement is being administered strictly in line with such rights and obligations. The board reiterates that there are no extraneous considerations in the administration of the contract. The board also dismisses any suggestion of interference from shareholders in the matter of administering this agreement,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
Bansal, who was the CFO of the company for two years till October 2015, was given a severance package of ₹17.38 crore to be paid in 10 installments until 2018. According to reports, the company has stopped payments after two installments.
When contacted, an Infosys spokesperson said the company was neither accepting nor denying media reports that suggested all further payments to the former employee had been stopped.
Bansal’s high severance pay — around four times his last drawn salary in the company — did raise eyebrows at the time. According to Infosys’ annual report, Bansal drew a salary of ₹4.72 crore in his last year in the company.
In June his year, Infosys chairman R Seshasayee, reacting to reports, refuted all charges of trying to buy Bansal’s silence by offering him an unusually large severance package.
At the last-concluded annual general meeting, Seshasayee said: “There have been some reports in the media on payments made to Rajiv Bansal. The separation of Rajiv Bansal was cordial and a mutually agreed decision in the interest of both the individual and the company. The implication of news reports unfortunately was that there was a very generous payment made to Rajiv and because it was generous, it was intended to silence Rajiv against making any statements and therefore there was something to be hidden.”
He had also said that the reason why Bansal was paid ‘generously’ was that he had been with the company for 16 years and the company wanted to acknowledge the same.
Bansal’s exit agreement from Infosys include a non-compete clause, meaning he will not join any of Infosys’ competitors after leaving the company, a normal industry practice to safeguard the interest of the company.
After leaving Infosys, Bansal joined city-based cab aggregator Ola in January this year.