ABN Amro Bank's senior vice president, Gerben Kuyper is a man with a mission. Kuyper was in Mumbai recently as part of an international roadshow team holding forth on the European monetary unions impact on the global markets. As a senior executive vice president he is responsible for corporate finance and equity capital markets. Armed with a masters degree in business economics from the Erasmus university Rotterdam, he has extensive international corporate finance experience and has played a major role in the main corporate finance assignment of ABN AMRO bank over the last few years. "It may look far away now, the common currency Euro, but rest assured such things tend to be all over us at a sudden", said Kuyper.

Before joining the ABN AMRO in 1980, he worked for Fokker for a period of five years as a contract and finance negotiator for civil aircraft. He started his career with ABN AMRO as manager Aerospace finance department. And since 1994 he is heading the corporate Finance department.

Space scientist resigns

Internationally renowned space scientist, professor U R Rao, the architect of India's space programme, recently resigned as the chairman of Space commission and secretary, department of space. He is an elected member of number of national and international including the Indian academy of sciences, Indian academy of engineering and third world academy of sciences. He is also co author of books like space and agenda 21, space technology for sustainable development. He also has many accolades firmly tucked under his belt like padma bhushan, Vikram Sarabhai award, national design award, SS Bhatnagar memorial award, Vasvik research award and many others.

He started his research career as a cosmic ray scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of technology Dallas and later joined South West centre for advanced studies. He worked as a prime experimenter on a series of Pioneer and explorer spacecraft. He returned to his homeland in 1966 and worked for a while in physical research laboratory, ahmedabad where he innitiated high energy astronomy programme. Finally convinced of a need to use space technology for national development, in 1975 he undertook the responsibility for the development of satellite technology in India.

Fascinated by Saatchi & Saatchi

The World's best creative agency, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising has seen a major change at the top. Kevin Roberts who had spent over 20 years with companies like Gillette and Procter & Gamble has been appointed as the chief executive officer, Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide. Previously in the eighties he held a similar position at Pepsi-cola in the middle- east and for the next five years he drove Pepsi's business in thirty six countries.

Remarking on the new appointment Roberts said,``I've been fascinated by the Saatchi & Saatchi magic since I first got involved in advertising. I have been loyal and enthusiatic client fro over 20 years. I relish the chance to make a contribution to the world's best advertsing agency.''

Communications man

ICO global communications has a new man to head its Indian operations-Dr Bishnu Das Pradhan. As senior VP and GM India, he will be responsible for spearheading ICO's business development covering all aspects of its commercial and regulatory affairs. He will work very closely with ICO's investors and its partner, Videsh Sanchar Nigam limited. ``Our main aim will be to bring affordable and innovative personal mobile and wireless communication services to Indian customers,'' he said. Prior to his appointment with ICO, Pradhan served international cellular infrastructure division, Motorola India limited as executive director.

Before that he was executive director and chairman of the project board, centre for development of Telematics. Pradhan is a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from university of Pennsylvania. He has also done electronic and electrical communication engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.