Axis PE's UK director quits

Axis Private Equity (PE), which is on a restructuring mode, saw the exit of its Director, William Knight, today. Knight was part of the company’s fundraising team and had joined the board in 2008. On March 1, Axis PE — a 100 per cent subsidiary of Axis Bank — had appointed Arun Prakash S Korati as the acting CEO. Korati replaced Alok Gupta, managing director and CEO, who resigned for personal reasons.

In his response to Business Standard, Knight said, “I can confirm my decision to resign. The original aims and objectives of the company were to provide growth capital to Indian-enabling companies in the highly important infrastructure space, and increasingly, the capital was to be raised from international investors. At the moment, I do not see many signs of this happening, while the company is a captive organisation. Therefore, I have decided to move on.”

For over 30 years, Knight has been involved commercially with India, including capital-raising for Indian companies, advising Indian institutions and investing. He is also on the board of trustees of Aureos India, a PE investor in Indian small and medium enterprises, as well as a board member of the LG India Fund that invests in the Indian public markets. His own company, Emerisque Brands, investors in Lee Cooper Jeans, had established a joint venture with the Pantaloon group in India.

Earlier, the decision of Axis Bank’s management to sell the PE business had not worked out, as domestic investors — including Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Corporation Bank, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank — opposed the terms offered by the bank. It had decided to scrape off the sell-out plans earlier this year.

Knight has been responsible for arranging a number of the first international borrowings by Indian institutions, notably ONGC, IDBI, ICICI and Indian Airlines, and working on the financing of Nalco’s aluminium plant in Orissa. His advisory assignments include the formation of SBI Capital Markets, strategic direction of SBI Mutual Fund and diversification of Gujarat Lease Finance.