Commodities bourse MCX to hire chief operating officer shortly

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

In a first, largest commodities bourse MCX is creating the post of chief operating officer, and the new appointment will be announced as early as early next month, a top exchange official has said.

It can be noted that no exchanges in the country, be it the largest NSE or the oldest BSE - a publicly-traded entity or the rival commex National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) have the post of a COO. All these exchanges have MDs/CEOs, chairmen and board members.

We have shortlisted a few candidates for the post of our first COO. We should have him/her joining us from early next month, Multi-Commodity Exchange managing director and chief executive PS Reddy told PTI on Wednesday.

Asked about the rationale for the post, which is a first in the exchanges space, he said there is more than enough workload for a second top executive.

He also said the exchange will have a new chief technology officer soon to replace the vacuum created by the sudden exit of Manav Jain amid the much-delayed software migration that the exchange has been trying to implement.

We have already finalised the replacement for the CTO. An official announcement is expected any day from now, reddy said and asserted that the exit of the past CTO and the new appointment will not have any material impact on the migration, as the project is being implemented by TCS and is not dependent on our own CTO and there is enough time for the transition -- till about next September.

On September 9, Jain, the top techie at MCX, had resigned, citing personal reasons, but comes amid the software transition and dip in trade volumes.

Shortly after Jain's resignation, the exchange had appointed a headhunter.

There were allegations that Jain left after the MCX decided to contract Tata Consultancy Services as its information technology services provider in place of 63 Moons Technologies from October 2022.

MCX's technology agreement with 63 Moons (formerly Financial Technologies of Jignesh Shah, who was the original promoter of MCX) will come to an end on September 30, 2022.

The daily average trading turnover fell about 44 per cent to Rs 24,251 crore in August 2021 from Rs 43,262 crore in the same month a year ago, according to official data.

In July this year, the average daily turnover was down at Rs 26,501 crore from Rs 37,136 crore in the same month last year.

Reddy also said the exchange will launch the energy index futures on October 7.

MCX board is now headed by Chairman Saurabh Chandra.

Reddy said the company will take a calibrated approach to open up after the lockdowns and currently only 20 per cent of the staff come to the office. We will gradually open up fully.