Jeh Wadia quits as Bombay Dyeing MD – Times of India

Mumbai: Eight days after he exited GoAir as its MD, Jehangir (Jeh) Wadia stepped down as the MD of Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Company — the flagship of the Nusli Wadia Group.
In a regulatory filing, Bombay Dyeing said Jeh will not be renewing his contract as MD of the company that expired on March 31. The 47-year-old Jeh, the second son of group chairman Nusli Wadia, took over as the MD of Bombay Dyeing on April 1, 2011.
Jeh has relinquished his role as MD at Bombay Dyeing and GoAir while continuing to be its promoter, sources said. It wasn’t immediately clear if he will be inducted in a non-executive director’s capacity at Bombay Dyeing and GoAir. Older brother Ness as well as the senior Wadia are on the board of the two companies.
The two exit moves indicate that the Wadia family wants to separate ownership from management. Sources said the restructuring is aimed at “professionalising the management” in Wadia Group operating entities, with the family continuing to hold shareholder rights and directorships. The group wants to bring in professional management to run their companies, said Shriram Subramanian, founder and MD of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research.
The Wadia Group, said the sources, wanted to follow the ownership and management separation model as that of Britannia, which has been a success story. Britannia, one of the largest bakery and dairy products players, has a market cap of Rs 87,156 crore as compared to the Rs 10,818-crore aggregate market cap of other listed Wadia companies — Bombay Burmah Trading, Bombay Dyeing and National Peroxide.
The practice of separating ownership and management has been implemented in Infosys where its founders left the running of the IT services company to qualified professional managers, while retaining the voting rights.
The day-to-day management at Bombay Dyeing will now be looked after by Suresh Khurana, who oversees the polyester business, and Hitesh Vora, the CFO, under the supervision of non-independent director Minnie Bodhanwala.