Infosys appoints Satwalekar as lead independent director

Bangalore: Infosys has announced the appointment of Deepak Satwalekar, an independent member on the board, as the lead independent director. This appointment is in line with the company's commitment to good corporate governance practices.

In the 22^nd annual general meeting (AGM) of Infosys Technologies held yesterday in Bangalore, Prof Marti Subrahmanyam, an independent member of the board at Infosys, chaired the AGM. Infosys used a non-mandatory postal ballot as an informal option to assess the general view of the absentee shareholders on the resolutions set out in the notice.

The non-mandatory postal ballot did not have the force of a legally binding vote and was not construed as a vote at the AGM. The chairman of the AGM read out the votes of the postal ballot before the passing of every resolution.

At the AGM, the members of the company approved the reappointment of Srinath Batni as a whole-time director and Dr Omkar Goswami, Senator Larry Pressler and Rama Bijapurkar as directors of the company. Sridar Iyengar too was appointed as a director of the company.

The members also approved the deletion of Article 107 of the Articles of Association, which provided that as long as N R Narayanamurthy and/or his relatives held not less than 5 per cent of the issued equity share capital of the company, Narayanamurthy shall be the managing director of the company and shall not be liable to retire by rotation.

The Article was not effected upon, ever since the company issued shares to the public. Narayanamurthy has offered to retire by rotation in line with the other members of the board. In this context, this Article had become redundant.