Kris formally becomes CEO of Infy

BANGALORE: Kris Gopalakrishnan formally become the Chief Executive Officer of Infosys today. At the 26th Annual General Meeting, addressing the shareholders, N R Narayana Murthy Chief Mentor of Infosys and Chairman of the board, said, Nandan Nilekani has followed the Infosys tradition and voluntarily passed on the CEO baton to Kris Goplakrishnan, worthy successor chosen by the board.

“Kris is gentle but firm, consultative yet decisive and thoughtful yet action oriented. At the same time Shibulal will become the Chief Operating Officer. He is smart, result oriented and focused,” said Murthy. Speaking on the performance of the company, he said the company is able to achieve 95 per cent of revenues from the repeat business. “Our client base stood at 500 at the end of the year, with 160 new clients added during the year. There was an increase of over 30 per cent in the number of five million dollar, ten million dollar and fifty million dollar clients, from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007. Additionally, we have three-hundred million dollar clients and one of our clients contributed more than $200 million in revenues.”

 “Our liquidity is based on Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). The company’s target is to earn a ROCE which is at least twice the cost of capital, and ROIC which is at least thrice the cost of capital,” added Murthy. Speaking on the dividends, Murthy said the company’s dividend policy limits to any dividend payout to 20 per cent of the new income generated during the year. “In keeping with our policy we recommended a final dividend of Rs 6.5 per share, along with the interim dividend of Rs 5 per share.

The total dividend as a percentage of profit after tax, is 19.9 per cent as compared to 19.4 per cent in the previous year.” When asked whether the company is looking at increasing the limit, Balakrishnan V, CFO of the company said, “The board has to take the decision on this. As of now, this is not under the consideration.”

Meanwhile speaking on the performance of the company over the last five years, outgoing CEO Nandan Nilekani said over the last 5 years the company has grown 41 per cent CAGR and revenues have grown from half a million dollars to three billion dollars. Employee strength has grown from 10,700 to 72,200. He summerised that the last five years operations has shown a sustained growth and business reconciliation. In the AGM, the board took the approval from shareholders to increase the remuneration given to the independent directors.

Speaking on the same, Balakrishnan said, “The board has made a provision. Earlier 0.5 per cent of the net profits of the company be paid and distributed among the directors of the company. Now we have increased this from 0.5 per cent to one percent. It doesn’t mean that we pay one per cent of our net profits to independent directors.”

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