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Nandini Goswami
Calcutta, Oct 13: Tapan Mitra, the high-profile managing director and vice-chairman of Indian Aluminium Co, is likely to resign during the company's board meeting scheduled on October 26. The entire board will also be recast, with more directors from its Canadian associate Alcan Aluminium.
Indal officials confirmed that changes would come about at the board meeting but said that the new structure was yet to be decided. Mitra himself was not available for comment as he was out of station.
Industry sources assume that Alcan, which increased its stake to 54 per cent following the defeat of a hostile bid by Sterlite Industries in July, will induct another three to four directors apart from the three it already has on the board.
It is likely that Alcan may appoint a vice-chairman cum managing director from its members, and create the post of a joint managing director for someone from Indal. Chief operating officer NK Choudhary is tipped to be the joint MD in that case.
The chairmanship of SM Datta may alsobe a question, industry sources said.
Alcan is expected to put its own man as the finance director. The finance function is now being looked after by a chief financial officer, Indrajit Banerjee. He took over as CFO after PS Datta resigned to join the Murugappa group, but was not a board member like Datta.
Tapan Mitra, who is also chairman of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, has been with Indal for the last 38 years (since 1961) and is also the longest serving managing director at Indal.
Mitra has made singular efforts in helping Indal become a major player in the aluminium industry. Moreover, standing by the company at critical junctures like the Sterlite's takeover attempt, his contribution in Indal has been quite phenomenal.
The resignation of Mitra would leave the board with only one executive director from Indal. Alcan currently has three directors -- S Thadhani, Brian Sturgell and P K Pal.
While Thadhani is Alcan's CFO, Sturgell its Asia Pacific director and PK Pal its chief legal officer.Alternate directors to Thadani and Sturgell are GP Batt and Glenn R Lucas.
The post of the financial institution nominee is also vacant now. Following the Sterlite bid, Alcan took control of another 20 per cent chunk of Indal's equity, reducing the holdings of the FIs to 20 per cent from 36 per cent earlier.
The board meeting on the 26th would also take into account the second quarter results ended September 30. The results are expected to be good as Indal had gone in for major cost cutting measures through improved logistics and tighter control on operating working capital by bringing down inventories and receivables in the current year.
The company had reported a 76 per cent growth in net profit for the first quarter of 1998-99. It has made a net profit of Rs 16.1 crore against Rs 9.16 crore in the same period of 1997-98.
Metal production and exports had also improved in the first quarter. The 10 per cent duty reduction on the import of aluminium melting scrap has the company to restore viability toits own scrap recycling plant at Taloja in Maharashtra.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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