Infosys seeks new chief ‘willing to tackle changes’

Bloomberg

Infosys Ltd. begins the search for a new chief executive officer this week with a tough set of requirements for any candidate: The person must
be capable of leading a 200,000
employee organisation, willing to tackle sweeping changes in the outsourcing industry and brave enough to drop in the middle of open warfare between the company’s board and co-founders.
The bedlam cost the company its current CEO, Vishal Sikka, who said on Friday he would step aside after escalating criticism from the co-founders over his compensation and strategy. The board defended Sikka and took the highly unusual step of calling out by name ex-Chairman Narayana Murthy for what they called his “inappropriate demands” and destructive involvement. The billionaire responded with a dire warning that he would respond “in the right manner” in the future.
The open hostilities will make it difficult to draw top candidates from outside the company and likely increase the chances an internal executive will be elevated to CEO. The Bangalore-based company, India’s second-largest outsourcer with more than $10 billion in revenue, also faces deep business challenges, from slowing growth and automation to hostility from the Trump administration in its most important market.
“It’s a tough one,” said Ashutosh Sharma, the New Delhi-based vice president, research director at Forrester Inc. “They’ll find it hard attracting global talent of Sikka’s calibre.”
Fifty-year-old Sikka, a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and the former chief technology officer of SAP SE, is credited with fostering innovation at the company, stemming attrition, boosting margins and pulling in a growing roster of large corporate customers. He helped increase Infosys’s revenue by about 25 percent since taking the helm three years ago.
Shares fell 4.6 percent on Monday, after dropping 13 percent and wiping out $3.5 billion of market value when Sikka’s departure was announced.
With many challenges ahead for the company, Forrester’s Sharma cautioned that the board doesn’t have the luxury of time. “The sooner they find a new CEO, the faster they’ll get back in the game.”