After Tata, there is rising tensions between the Infosys founders and the company CEO Vishal Sikka is grabbing all the attention but a careful reading of the situation makes it clear that the man under the most intense pressure, actually, is the company chairman, R Seshasayee. According to people close to the situation, some of the founders have expressed unhappiness at the R Seshasayee-led board for not closely scrutinizing some of the company’s recent decisions which they claim have been at odds with established practices. V Balakrishnan, who succeeded Pai as Info sys’ CFO, also added that If you look at the issues dispassionately , founders are raising some serious governance concerns.
Infosys stood for gold standard in corporate governance. It’s a big distraction and employee morale will get impacted. That’s true! Both Pai and Balakrishnan, at one point, were contenders for the top job at Infosys and left when they felt that path was blocked for them. Rod Bourgeois, head of research in DeepDive Equity Research said on behalf of Vishal Sikka that his style is certainly different from that of Infosys’ founders. Sikka deserves credit for injecting new ideas and for rallying the troops around new aspirations. He also added that according to him Infosys’ planned shift to automation and software content will encounter financial shortcomings.”
When N R Narayana Murthy was asked on Wednesday about his concerns on how Infosys is being run, he did not deny specifically that there were issues. He had written a letter to Sikka in the past and was asked about the same but he denied by replying that he doesn’t remember any such letter written to Sikka by him. He was also questioned regarding the issue he raised in the past which included Sikka’s compensation, severance packages and shifting value system. Murthy replied that he was in Hyderabad And Vishal would give the best answer to these questions
