Street Food: Year of the new leaders

2017 seems the year of new faces. We have a chairman-designate for the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and a new chief executive of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Among major corporate groups, the Tatas have anointed N Chandrasekaran. ITC and Larsen & Toubro are in the process of moving to a new leadership after a long, long while.

 

Each of these new leaders are going to have reasonably long tenures. This will allow them to leave a lasting impression on the capital markets, investor community and the broader economy. Most of them are on the right side of the 50s, considered young for such positions. NSE's Vikram Limaye is the youngest at about 50. Chandra is three years older. Sanjiv Puri, just taken over as chief executive of ITC, is 54. S N Subramanyan, taking charge as L&T chairman in October, is 55.

 

Even considering the conservative retirement age of 65, these people have a decade or more. If they get as powerful as some of their predecessors, they could stretch it further. What the chiefs of Sebi and NSE say and do will have marketwide implications. The new corporate leaders will lord over close to Rs 15 lakh crore in market capitalisation. We are looking at the colossi of the next decade, top newsmakers of the future.

 

The oldest among the lot discussed is Sebi's chairman-designate, Ajay Tyagi, at 59. He has a five-year tenure upfront, a luxury his predecessors did not get.

 

While they are getting into the helm of critical institutions, these new leaders have to look at the long term. They have the luxury of time. They should have a vision for 2030 and gear up their respective organisations towards that.

 

However, they should be careful in dealing with the past. Ask Cyrus Mistry and Vishal Sikka. Both leaders seem to have made the mistake of taking lightly the people who picked them. Some analysts feel Sikka's situation is not as bad as Mistry's but the jury is still out on that.

 

For the leaders of these organisations, especially Chandra, Puri and Subramanyan, there seems to be a clear writing on the wall to look good without making their mentors look bad. At least ensure the old men don't feel too bad as they go about putting their stamp on these behemoths, where no individual promoter dominates.

 

Limaye and Tyagi have a common problem, of the NSE unfair access issue. They need to get this out of the way as quickly as possible. Tyagi has a much longer list of past baggage awaiting clearance. The Reliance case, Satyam PwC matters and the NDTV takeover case, to name a few.