Mumbai: India''s largest engineering conglomerate, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), is planning to set up at least five new companies to "ensure better corporate governance and attract talent to the company,'' said company officials.

Each of these companies will have a CEO, a board, and finance and human resource management teams. L&T has also launched a global hunt for CEOs.

These CEOs will be a part of the group corporate management committee but would not be placed on the L&T board.

The companies will operate in L&T''s new business areas of power projects, boilers, turbines, water and shipbuilding. The company has undertaken an exercise to identify other areas. The new structure will also open up opportunities for L&T insiders to move up the ladder.

The officials said the reason behind setting up new companies was that L&T has a complex structure having 62 different areas of operation.

The move to create operating companies within the overall L&T umbrella is aimed at simplifying the structure as it is felt that an individual chairman or CEO would find it difficult to manage the complexities as existing businesses are growing fast and there is a need to get into new ones.