The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has cleared the appointment of Ashish Kumar Chauhan as the managing director and CEO of National Stock Exchange (NSE). At present, Chauhan is the MD and CEO of BSE. He is likely to be appointed for a period of five years at the rival bourse.
Chauhan will be taking over the reins of NSE from Vikram Limaye, whose five-year term ended on Saturday. Limaye did not seek extension at NSE despite being eligible to continue at the top post. A technocrat from IIT and IIM, Chauhan was one of the founders of NSE.
He is considered the father of modern financial derivatives in India because of his work in the area during 1993- 2000. He is also the creator of the Nifty index and was in charge of setting up the first screen-based trading. Starting his career as a banker with IDBI, Chauhan has been with BSE since 2009, enabling it to become the world’s fastest exchange with six microseconds response time.
In a statement, NSE confirmed Sebi has approved Chauhan’s appointment. In the interim, an internal executive committee comprising Yatrik Vin, group CFO and head corporate affairs, Priya Subbaraman, chief regulatory officer, Somasundaram K.S., chief enterprise risk and information security officer and Shiv Kumar Bhasin, chief technology and operations officer has been constituted for the purpose of running the affairs of the bourse.
The appointment comes at a crucial time for the bourse, which has been facing regulatory probes pertaining to governance lapses as well as a scam related to its co-location facility. The co-location case resulted in the ouster and later arrest of its former MD and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna.
The country’s largest stock exchange had earlier invited applications for a new CEO. Listing out the eligibility criteria, the NSE notice stated that the candidate must have a track record of strengthening corporate governance, enterprise risk management and compliance management framework. The candidates should have at least 25 years of experience in capital markets and minimum five years at the leadership level.
