New chief well before my retirement: Murthy

Infosys co-founder and chairman N R Narayana Murthy today said his company would get a suitable successor well before his retirement in August 2011, as the hunt for a replacement had already begun.

“We have a nominations committee and Jeffrey Lehman is the chairman of that. At an appropriate time, he and his committee will come up with a successor so that I can retire on August 20, 2011. I am sure the committee will do an excellent job,” Murthy said on the sidelines of an event organised by the All India Management Association here today.

The succession plan comes at a time when India s top business house, the Tata Group, has also begun a search for a successor to its chief, Ratan Tata, who will retire in December 2012.

On US senator Charles Schumer calling Infosys a “chop shop”, Murthy said, “The culture at Infosys is to collect data, do analysis, reach a conclusion and then speak about it. I wish everybody did that.”

“The emergency border funds will be paid for by assessing fees on foreign companies known as chop shops, that outsource good, high-paying American technology jobs to lower wage, temporary immigrant workers from other countries. These are companies such as Infosys. But it will not affect the high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft that play by the rules and recruit workers in America,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Schumer as saying in the Senate. 

Rohan crafted ring for
Lakshmi, says MurthyInfosys’ chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy’s son, Rohan, who will soon wed Lakshmi Venu, 26-year-old daughter of TVS Motor Co-chairman Venu Srinivasan, spent hours to make a platinum ring for his fiancé.

“My son Rohan and Venu’s daughter, Lakshmi, have known each other for several months. Last Wednesday, when he landed in India, we were very surprised. He had spent seven-and-a-half hours in a forge in Rhode Island to produce the ring for Lakshmi. That’s when we came to know that he is going to propose to her,” said Murthy.