Infosys’ Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director (MD), Vishal Sikka announced his resignation fromm the company following some conflicts among the founders of the company and its board of directors. The founders of Infosys were reportedly dissatisfied with the board’s decision of implementing a pay rise for Sikka and other senior executives in the company as compared to other employee paychecks especially in times of a slowdown in the IT sector.
In his resignation letter that came as a shock given that Sikka was appointed in June 2014 with the responsibility of charting the company’s business growth, he puts the blame for his departure from the organization on certain constant “drumbeat of distractions and negativity” that did not let him focus on the company’s positive growth and development. He has further added that he was “besieged by false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacks” and this he claims has been happening “over the last many months and quarters.”
Moving on…https://t.co/U3CJrtdz5c
— Vishal Sikka (@vsikka) August 18, 2017
Sikka had taken up the lead Infosys position of CEO for the first time succeeding N.R. Narayana Murthy who is one of the founders of the company even though the former had no role to play in the inception of Infosys.
Tables have turned now as Sikka’s decision is in the wake of the newspaper Mint’s reports on Murthy’s recent email to advisers stating that he had been told by three independent directors of the company about Sikka being more a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) material than Chief Executive Officer (CEO) material. If reports are to be believed, Murthy’s issues (that seemed to have aggravated) with ‘lapses’ in corporate goverance of Infosys under Sikka over the past few months have further led to the latter’s resignation.
Now appointed as the Executive Vice Chairman for Infosys, until the position of CEO is filled (which is expected to be by March next year), Sikka claimed in his resignation speech, “I feel proud of our progress and achievements.” Meanwhile, U B Pravin Rao who has 30 years of experience and has been the Chief Operating Officer and Chairperson of the tech giant has been appointed as the interim MD and CEO of the company.
The Infosys board has accepted the resignation albeit regretting Sikka’s decision as in a statement that claimed that the board is “profoundly distressed by the unfounded personal attacks on the members of our management team that were made in the anonymous letters and have surfaced in recent months.”
Sikka will meanwhile report to the board and “continue to focus on strategic initiatives, key customer relationships and technology development.”
The information technology company is however bearing the brunt of these “attacks” as the shares have reportedly gone down by 7-8 percent in a couple of hours after the announcement.
Photo Credits: Twitter
