Next chief of Murugappa group to be non-family member
Chennai: Group chairman, Murugappa group, MV Subbiah has stepped down in favour of a non-family member, NS Raghavan.
Raghavan, who is the former Infosys Technologies’ joint managing director has been appointed the new chairman of the Murugappa Corporate Board (MCB), the apex governing board of the group. He is already an independent director on the MCB and will serve as a non-executive chairman.

The Murugappa Corporate Board (MCB) was established by the Murugappa group almost two years ago as part of a corporate restructuring plan. At the time of announcing the changes Mr Subbiah indicated that the change has been made to improve the corporate governance practices of the Murugappa group, expected to clock a turnover of Rs 3,900 crore for year 2000-2001.

Raghavan, is entrusted with the mandate to search for a full-time executive chairman of the MCB for which no time-frame has been fixed.

Mr Subbiah said the Murugappa group has seen transformation from a family-owned business to a professionally managed group in the last two years since restructuring began. Family members, who were controlling the companies, have given place to professional managers but continued to be on the MCB with specific responsibilities of strategy and policy decisions and being mentors for select business activities.

Mr Subbiah has now become a director of external relations and innovation and will be mentor for business such as sugar, neemazal, nutrceuticals and plantations.

The composition of the MCB now is: Mr NS Raghavan - chairman; independent directors Prof Marti G Subrahmanyam and Mr Natalino Duo. Mr MA Alagappan, a Murugappa group family member, is now vice-chairman and director, strategy and mentor for engineering and marketing services businesses.

Mr A Vellayan (also a family member) continues to be director marketing and is mentor for agri-input and ceramics; Mr Partho S Datta, a non-family member, is director finance and mentor for financial services; Mr MM Murugappan (family) director of technology and mentor for abrasives business; and Mr MM Venkatachalam (family) director of HRD and mentor for confectionery business.
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