Kishore Biyani appointed MD Bharti Retail Limited

Future Group’s Chief Executive Kishore Biyani has been appointed managing director of Bharti Retail as part of the reconstitution of the board following their merger pact announced last year.
Besides, Rakesh Biyani, who is also a director at Future Group, has also been appointed as Joint Managing Director of Bharti Retail, which will be later renamed as Future Retail Ltd and listed on stock exchanges.
On 1 May, 2016, the Future Group gave effect to the scheme of arrangement between Future Retail Limited and Bharti Retail Limited for acquisition of the retail operations of Bharti Group. Accordingly, the Boards of the two companies were reconstituted to ensure a proper representation of both promoters as well as the professional board.
In its meeting held on 2 May 2016, Bharti Retail Limited announced the reconstitution of the Board of Directors of the company.
Apart from Kishore and Rakesh Biyani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Enterprises Limited, Rajan Mittal, will continue to serve as a member of the board of directors. Joining the board as independent directors are industry leaders Ravi Dhariwal, Gagan Singh and Shailendra Bhandari.
Till recently, Ravi Dhariwal was CEO Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. and prior to that he had been associated with Pepsico. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to private equity firm TPG Growth. The board hopes he will bring on board a rich experience in strategy, organizational development, marketing and brand management.
Gagan Singh currently serves as the CEO-Business at JLL India and is the chairperson of the firm’s Sri Lanka operations. Before this, Singh was Executive Director Benetton India.
Also Read: Kishore Biyani steps down as MD Future Retail
Shailendra Bhandari is the former Managing Director and CEO of ING Vysya Bank and MD and CEO of Centurion Bank of Punjab. He has also served as the Head of private equity at Tata Capital and as Executive Director at HDFC Bank and brings on board decades of experience in finance, governance as well as organizational strategy and growth.
Apart from these appointments, Future Group veteran CP Toshniwal, has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the company.
The Story So Far
In May last year, Future group agreed to merge its retail business with rival Bharti Retail in an all-stock deal worth Rs 750 crore to create one of the biggest supermarket chains with Rs 15,000 crore turnover.
The two-tiered deal involved merger of their respective retail infrastructure business into Future Retail thus creating two separate companies — one the front-end retail and another for infrastructure activities.
“Future Group has given effect to the scheme of arrangement between Future Retail Ltd and Bharti Retail Ltd for acquisition of the retail operations of Bharti Group. The Boards of the two companies have been reconstituted to ensure proper representation of promoters and the professional Board,” the group said in a statement.
Bharti now operates some of the most popular retail brands of Future Retail, including Big Bazaar, EasyDay, FBB, Foodhall, HomeTown and eZone.
Future Group said as part of the merger, Bharti Retail will be listed on the NSE and BSE. It has also set May 12 as the record date to ascertain the entitlement of Future Retail shareholders to receive Bharti Retail shares.
The company would be submitting the application for listing by end of May. Future Retail continues to be listed on both these exchanges, it added.
According to PTI, company sources said that Future Retail Ltd will be renamed as Future Enterprises, which will own and manage the back end retail infrastructure for operating the retail network as well as the investments in various Future Group companies.
On the other hand, Bharti Retail will become Future Retail and it will be responsible for the front-end retail operations of the group, the sources were quoted by PTI as saying.