GMR firms up process for succession

As founder chairman G Mallikarjuna Rao turns 61 this Wednesday, the GMR Group is firming a smooth succession plan. Rao, who is to retire in the next five years, is understood to have given his two sons and his sole son-in-law the power to decide on the next boss of the infrastructure major. A committee will be formed for the task.

Rao, a native of Rajam in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, also owns the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket team Delhi Daredevils.

According to people in the know, if the trio fails to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution, the deadlock will be resolved with assistance from an external agency/person. An official spokesperson for the Group avoided comment.

As a precursor to the plan, GMR recently rejigged its management team to run its three main businesses — airports, power, highways — among the two sons and son-in-law. Rao’s elder son, G B S Raju, who was chairman of corporate functions and international business, is heading the energy division. His younger brother, Kiran K Grandhi, who was in charge of the Delhi, Hyderabad, Istanbul and Male airports, is focusing on urban infrastructure and highways. Rao’s son-in-law, Srinivas Bommidala, stepped down as MD of GMR Infra and is in charge of the airports business.

A senior GMR official says the patriarch’s focus is to familiarise all the three core team members with all the aspects of the business. “Hence, this move,” he sums up. “The businesses will run as per the road map we have laid out.”

It is also understood that the structure of shareholding has been arrived among the four constituents of the core family —Rao, his two sons and one son-in-law -- by equally dividing the holding among them. The promoters, by end of second quarter of FY12, hold 71.42 per cent in GMR Infrastructure. Of this, 28.55 per cent has been pledged. GMR Infrastructure’s market capitalisation on Monday was Rs 7,025 crore, based on the stock price of Rs 18.05 a share on the Bombay Stock Exchange.