L&T to get 3 Board positions in Mindtree

Construction major L&T, which is in the midst of a hostile takeover of Mindtree Ltd, has secured three board positions at the IT services firm, giving it a firm control over the company.

IT firm Mindtree Thursday said L&T CEO and MD SN Subrahmanyan will join its Board as Non-Executive Director with effect from July 16.

The Nomination and Remuneration Committee and the Board of Directors of Mindtree have also approved and recommended the appointments of Jayant Damodar Patil and Ramamurthi Shankar Raman as non-executive directors, subject to shareholders' approval at Mindtree's Annual General Meeting on July 16, a BSE filing said.

Patil is a whole-time director and Senior Executive Vice-President for L&T's Defence business, while Raman presently oversees the finance functions across the L&T Group, it added.

"Subroto Bagchi, who retires by rotation at the 20th AGM on July 16, 2019, has not offered himself for re-appointment," the filing noted.

The committee has also approved the appointment of Prasanna Rangacharya and Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa as independent directors, it added.

At the end of March 2019, Mindtree had eight members on its board of which four were independent directors.

In March, L&T had said it will buy 20.32 per cent stake in Mindtree from VG Siddhartha and his coffee enterprise for over Rs 3,000 crore - marking India's first-ever hostile takeover bid in the IT space.

Since then, L&T has steadily increased its holding in the Bengaluru-based tech firm to about 30 per cent. L&T is currently in the process of an open offer to buy an additional 31 per cent stake.

The open offer - with an offer price of Rs 980 per share - opened on June 17 and is slated to close on June 28. If the offer is subscribed fully, the engineering behemoth will end up with a 66.32 per cent holding in Mindtree.