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Amid wealth erosion, sluggish growth, management churn and constant controversies, the CEO’s days might just be numbered.

Editor's note: Kumar Mangalam Birla’s losses in the telecom business are well documented. Compared to that, the damage from his Aditya Birla Group’s financial services play may be less spectacular. But in the past four years, the value of the group’s holdings in Aditya Birla Capital have fallen more than Rs 23,000 crore. At the same time, Aditya Birla Capital CEO Ajay Srinivasan has been paid a total of more than Rs 100 crore in the same four years. Srinivasan has little to show for his 14-year stint at the helm of the financial services business of one of the oldest conglomerates in India. Apart from the wipe-out of shareholder wealth, the company has struggled with a loss of market share, allegations of corruption, scrutiny from investigative agencies and a high level of attrition at the top. In February this year, company secretary Sailesh Kumar Daga had stepped down followed by Maneesh Dangi, chief investment officer of debt at Aditya Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund, in March. Since May, at the shadow banking business of the group, the chief financial officer and the …
Telecom and retail both continue with their ‘hit and miss’, while O2C delivers an unsurprisingly poor performance in Q4. This is a year RIL will be glad to see the back of.
Atanu Chakraborty’s resignation does not appear as damaging as the bank’s response to it. The ‘all is well’ narrative needs an independent audit.
Telecom and retail, which account for half the conglomerate’s revenue and most of its valuation, aren’t accelerating fast enough to justify their price tags.