Sanjay Sinha quits L&T MF as CEO

Fund house witnessing mass exits at the top for a year.

L&T Mutual Fund, a new entrant in the domestic fund industry, has failed to apply brakes on the exodus of its top executives. After a series of exits, now it was the turn of the chief executive officer (CEO), Sanjay Sinha, to put in his papers. The move comes barely two years after L&T entered the fund management business.

Ashutosh Bishnoi, former executive director of UTI Mutual Fund, will supervise the operations of the company till the search for a new CEO is over.

N Sivaraman, president & whole time director of L&T Finance Holdings, said: “The selection panel for the new CEO has been constituted and a search (for a CEO) is underway.”

It could not be independently verified where Sinha was headed. According to industry insiders, he is likely to join India Infoline AMC.

Earlier this year, chief marketing officer Mohit Sachdev moved out of the organisation to join SREI Asset Management Company as the chief executive officer. In October last year, Anish Shah, vice-president, finance and operations, had quit to join Deutsche Bank. Earlier, Deepak Mehta, national head, retail sales, put in his papers to join UTI AMC.

In November 2010, Jude Abraham, who handled institutional sales for the western and southern regions, joined Taurus MF as national head of institutional sales. Rajesh Singh, also a part of the institutional sales team, left L&T MF around the same time. Bajrang Bafna and Dinesh Ahuja, who were managing equity and debt schemes, respectively, are also among those who moved out of the AMC last year.

Sinha previously headed DBS Cholamandalam AMC. Prior to it, he was associated with SBI Mutual Fund. L&T Finance forayed into the MF business in September 2009 after acquiring DBS Cholamandalam AMC for Rs 45 crore. The company had assets worth Rs 2,893 crore at the end of August 2009. DBS Cholamandalam AMC was later rechristened as L&T MF.

Back then, L&T Finance had retained the CEO of DBS Cholamandalam AMC, Sinha, and his entire team of 80 members. For the quarter ended June, L&T MF’s average assets under management (AUM) stood at Rs 5,214.7 crore, up 29.4 per cent compared with March 2011.