Thomas Cook elevates Mahesh Iyer to COO post; expands roles of key executives

Iyer will be responsible for day to day business management, in addition to managing the visa and foreign exchange business in India, Mauritius and Sri Lanka

Thomas Cook has elevated Mahesh Iyer, head of its foreign exchange division, to the position of chief operating officer and expanded the roles of few of its senior executives as part of a move to realign backend services following acquisition of Kuoni Tours last year.

Iyer who was chief operating officer in charge of company's foreign exchange division is now the overall COO of the company and will be responsible for day to day business management. He will also be resposible for managing the visa and foreign exchange business in India, Mauritius and Sri Lanka.

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Thomas Cook is adopting a 'shared services' strategy to align its backend services with Kuoni which it acquired last year. As a part of this measure few of its executives will now hold group positions, covering Thomas Cook and Kuoni ( which has been rebranded as SOTC).

The executives with new roles include Abraham Alapatt (President and group head - marketing, service quality, financial services and innovation), Amit Madhan (President and group head - technology and shared services), Rambhau Kenkre (President and group head - legal, secreterial and administration) and Mona Cheriyan (President and group head - human resources).

In another change, Rajeev Kale will now be in charge of the outbound leisure tour division, in addition to domestic and meeting-incentive tour segment. Indiver Rastogi will  head  the corporate travel division and build global alliances for the company's business travel vertical.

"We will drive synergies in shared services such as invoicing, purchase of airline seats, hotel rooms, IT and human resources. My priority is to have a shared services platform in place and I expect synergy benefits will start from the last quarter of 2016," Thomas Cook's managing director Madhavan Menon said to Business Standard last December.

While the inbound tours divisions of two companies have been integrated, Thomas Cook and SOTC function as separate entities and continue to compete in outbound travel, meeting-incentive tours and corporate travel businesses.