Malvinder Mohan Singh has resigned as the non-executive chairman of Religare Enterprises Ltd in a top-level reshuffle that also led to the exit of the company’s chief executive officer and finance chief.
Singh, part of the company’s promoter group, will continue as a non-executive board member, the financial services company said in a statement.
It added that the board has appointed S. Lakshminarayanan as its new executive chairman with immediate effect.
Lakshminarayanan is a retired bureaucrat and was most recently chairman and independent director at non-banking financial company Shriram Transport Finance Co. Ltd.
Malvinder Mohan Singh and brother Shivinder Mohan Singh said in the statement that under Lakshminarayanan’s leadership, “we are confident that Religare will overcome its existing challenges and will be back on its growth path”.
Religare also said that independent director Rashi Dhir, CEO Maninder Singh, CFO Anil Saxena and company secretary Mohit Maheshwari have also resigned.
Krishnan Subramanian has been appointed as the new CFO and Kishori Udeshi as an independent director. Udeshi was the first woman to be appointed as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Religare also said that its board decided to raise primary capital, review various strategic options including partnerships with complementary businesses and induct new management executives in key positions.
“We have always believed that a professional management should run a diversified and highly regulated business such as Religare,” the Singh brothers said.
They said that, in July 2016, due to sliding business performance, they had to return on the board. “Since then we have been engaging closely with the members of the board and the management to understand and address the issues and took a series of corrective measures to stabilize the company. We now feel the time has once again come for us to hand over the reins to a new committed professional team to drive Religare’s future growth.”
Lakshminarayanan said his immediate focus will be to strengthen the governance structure, bring in new board members, infuse fresh equity capital, chalk out future growth plans and work towards enhancing stakeholder value.
