ITC believes in creating 'value out of diversity': Puri rules out demerger

Puri said some slowdown was seen in consumption towards the second half of last financial year and it still continues

ITC’s new chairman, Sanjiv Puri, is aspiring to make the company a leader in all business segments and ruled out a demerger of different entities. Some of the shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Friday raised the issue of demerging the different businesses for better shareholder returns. Puri, however, said the philosophy of ITC was to create value out of diversity. 

“It makes sense for ITC to operate this way and benefit from the synergies that we have today from our own diversity. There are various ways in which a conglomerate like ours is valued. More importantly, the