Three decades of Ravi Parthasarathy led to IL&FS's lateral growth

IL&FS has a very high leverage resulting from the sizeable capital requirement across subsidiaries

When Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) was set up in 1989, Ravi Parthasarathy became its chief executive officer. Last week, the 66-year-old credited for having built the group, resigned as its chairman after spending nearly half of his life with IL&FS. 

While health issues reportedly made him hang up his boots, a professional in infrastructure financing said it was “too long and too opaque” a tenure. “Had it been some other chairman, where shareholders moved to select a successor without following the appropriate process, I would have been the devil’s advocate. But in his case, he had been there