CEO quits National Stock Exchange weeks before planned IPO

By Rafael Nam

MUMBAI (Reuters) - National Stock Exchange said on Friday its chief executive Chitra Ramkrishna has quit for "personal reasons", only weeks before the country's biggest bourse is due to kick off its own initial public offering.

A source familiar with NSE's operations told Reuters that Ramkrishna had clashed with some board members over the timing of the listing, saying she had favoured a slower timeline.

The NSE had said it would submit an application for an initial public offering by January after a bitter tussle with foreign shareholders who had felt it was taking too long to list.

The board had accepted Ramkrishna's resignation and J. Ravichandran, who is NSE President, has been appointed interim CEO with immediate effect, while the board starts the process of finding a new CEO, the exchange added in a statement.

"The Board, while accepting her request, appreciated her sterling contribution to the growth of the organisation over the long years that she had been associated with it."

Earlier media reports said Ramkrishna had tendered her resignation because of differences with the board.

An NSE spokesman declined to comment on the reports, while Ramkrishna, who was one of the founders of the NSE and had spent decades there, was not immediately available for comment.

Ramkrishna was appointed joint managing director of NSE in 2009 and promoted to become its CEO in 2013.

(Editing by Sunil Nair and Alexander Smith)