The recurring top-level resignations at Infosys

It is rumoured that Srinivas was upset over some of his juniors being evaluated for the post of CEO

It was recently announced that the Infosys president and board member BG Srinivas had resigned from the company. Just four months ago, Srinivas, who joined the company in 1999, was made president of the firm for global market s, with various key divisions like financial and public services reporting to him. He was widely expected to become CEO in 2015, when the incumbent CEO SD Shibulal retires.

It is rumoured that Srinivas was upset over some of his juniors being evaluated for the post of CEO. A former unnamed Infosys employee explained to The Economic Times, “How can you make him president and then let him compete against people who report to him for the top job?” The former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan told the same newspaper, “He would have got an inkling that he wasn’t becoming the CEO. The Board should now speed up the process, or else it could cause management instability.”

Srinivas becomes the 11th top-level executive to resign from the company in recent months. Just last month, its chief compliance officer Nithyanandan Radhakrishnan put in his papers. Others include another Balakrishnan, who was also a top CEO contender, Infosys operational head Chandrashekar Kakal, Infosys global sales head Basab Pradhan, Infosys’ global manufacturing head Ashok Vemuri, and Infosys Consulting co-founder Stephen R Pratt.

All these resignations have come in since founder NR Narayana Murthy returned to the company in June last year. Murthy was called back from retirement in the hope that he could revive the company’s growth at a time when peers like TCS and HCL Tech were out-performing Infosys. Apart from the resignations, media reports also show that Infosys has reported an unusually high attrition rate of 18.7 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

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