Star TV sees spate of resignations
Mumbai: Sameer Nair, the 42-year-old CEO of Star TV (India) has resigned from the company. Recently, Nair is said to have had a series of meetings with a high-powered team from the company's regional headquarters in Hong Kong, led by Star TV president Paul Aiello and HR head Ian Moore.

Sources say Nair will join NDTV's new joint venture with Karan Johar's Dharma Productions as CEO along with 17 STAR employees. A formal announcement is likely to be made on Wednesday.

A few days ago Michelle Guthrie, Star's Asia head had resigned. This was followed by the release of Star India's annual results which revealed that revenues had fallen over the last two years, by as much as 35-42 pc.

Ad revenues at Star Plus have dipped from Rs830 crore in 2005 to Rs700 crore in 2006. Star One, launched in November 2004, with a production budget of Rs250 crore, continues to be a loss-making venture with revenues around Rs80-100 crore. For KBC, Star has spent more than Rs100 crore on programming, half of which have gone to Shah Rukh Khan.

Peter Mukerjea, the erstwhile CEO of Star TV's India operations, has also resigned and will join wife Indrani Mukerjea's INX Global as chairman. INX Global is a Mumbai-based headhunting firm.
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Ashok Piramal group appoints Mahesh Gupta as MD
New Delhi: Ashok Piramal Group has appointed Mahesh Gupta as its group managing director. Gupta joined Ashok Piramal Group as group executive director and has been working for over 17 years with the group, including nine years as group CFO.

The group has business interests in Peninsula Land Ltd, Morarjee Textiles, Piramyd Retail Ltd among others.
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Tesco appoints Amit Soni has head, financial services
Chennai: Amit Soni has been appointed as the head of financial services of Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), the global services arm of retailer Tesco.

Soni is a chartered accountant with over 18 years of experience in global financial accounting and analysis and has formerly worked with Hewlett Packard BPO, American Express, Xerox India and ICICI Onesource.
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Preeti Malhotra is first women president at ICSI
New Delhi: Preeti Malhotra has been elected as president of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, and is the first woman to have been elected to the post.

Malhotra is currently the director and company secretary of Spice Communications.

Keyoor M Bakshi, a practising company secretary in Ahmedabad, has been elected as vice-president of the Institute.
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Ex-GTB chief, others chargesheeted by CBI
Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed chargesheets against the former chairman of Global Trust Bank (GTB), Ramesh Gelli, Sridhar Subhashree and two of its corporate clients for fraud leading to the dissolution of the bank.

After the moratorium, this is the first action taken by CBI in connection with the fraud.

The chargesheets filed with the CBI special court are based on departmental findings which highlighted that the fraud had resulted from the top management's complicity rather than willful loan defaults in connivance with bank employees, as is the case in other bank frauds.

The CBI has filed chargesheets against two Chennai-based companies of the Balaji group — Balaji Industrial Corporation and Balaji Hotels — and Mumbai-based Beautiful group (proprietors of Leelavati hospitals).
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