Son Rises At Spic, Ashwin Muthiah Takes Reins

Ashwin C Muthiah, son of A C Muthiah, has been elected as vice-chairman of the Southern Petrochemicals Industries Corporation Ltd (Spic), the Rs 2,200 crore flagship company of the M A Chidambaram Group. He has also been vested with full executive powers to review and run the affairs of the company.

The board, which met today, elevated P R Sundaravadivelu, managing director, as vice-chairman of the company in recognition of his services to the company.

Describing it as part of the succession plan, A C Muthiah, chairman of the Spic group said: "With the change in the top management, myself and Sundaravadivelu will be able to devote more time to policy matters and other pressing matters. And Ashwin will take care of the day-to-day affairs of the company."

 

A C Muthiah identified financial re-engineering and human resource development (HRD) as two crucial issues that need to be tackled on priority basis by Ashwin and added that Ashwin would now head a management sub-committee, which would assist him in running the affairs of the company. He said the company might introduce Voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for shelving the excess staff.

He further stated that there was no change in the earlier stand of the management to concentrate on agro-inputs alone and hiving off biotechnology and pharmaceutical divisions into two separate companies.

As for financial re-engineering, the company has already embarked on restructuring exercise to reduce the interest burden like restructuring of the floating rate notes at 100 basis points lower and securitising the future receivables consequent to the sale of heavy chemicals division to its group company TamilNadu Petroproducts Ltd.

SPIC during the year ended March 31, 2001 earned a net profit of Rs 15.87 crore (Rs 28.37 crore) on a turnover of Rs 2,293.49 (Rs 2,711.78 crore). The interest charge during the same period increased to Rs 214.47 crore, up from Rs 180.68 crore during the previous year.

A C Muthiah also informed that Babu K Verghese, hitherto managing director of Indo Jordan Chemicals Ltd, Jordan, would join SPIC as deputy managing director from October 2001.