Just as Anil Agarwal, the billionaire, is heading a mining conglomerate into an ambitious business restructuring, veteran finance professional Ajay Goel has returned to Vedanta Ltd. as the company’s new chief financial officer.
Sonal Shrivastava, who had held the position for months before resigning, was replaced by him. Vedanta announced in a stock exchange filing that Goel has been named the company’s CFO, effective October 30, 2023.
“As part of Vedanta’s structured re-hiring programme called ‘Gharwapsi’, Mr. Ajay Goel joins back the company,” stated the statement.
Goel left Vedanta earlier in the year to work with the education start-up BYJU’s.
Vedanta added in the same statement that Shrivastava had resigned as CFO “due to personal reasons” as of October 24 at the latest.
“Goel is a national rank holder both as a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary and comes with rich experience in global multinational companies such as General Electric, Nestle, Coca Cola and Diageo – USL in various leadership roles,” stated the statement.
He was earlier associated with Vedanta as acting CFO of the company from October 23, 2021, to April 9, 2023.
“During his earlier role at Vedanta, Ajay contributed significantly in terms of driving business performance, managing the financial affairs of the company and heading the finance function with his leadership acumen. He was also instrumental in successfully handling regulatory approvals, investments matters, capital allocation, investor relations and major M&A-related affairs,” Vedanta said.
Byju’s announced that it has made new appointments to its finance division. Nitin Golani, who is currently the President-Finance, will become the India CFO, while Pradip Kanakia will serve as a senior adviser.
Vedanta declared last month that it would divide into six public businesses in an effort to draw in investors and raise values. The proposals call for the defusion and independent listing of the core firms, including its metals, electricity, aluminium, and oil and gas industries, in order to maximise potential value.
“By demerging our business units, we believe that will unlock value and potential for faster growth in each vertical. While they all come under the larger umbrella of natural resources, each has its own market, demand and supply trends, and potential to deploy technology to raise productivity,” Agarwal, Chairman of Vedanta, had said at that time.
Vedanta Aluminium, Vedanta Oil & Gas, Vedanta Power, Vedanta Steel and Ferrous Materials, Vedanta Base Metals, and Vedanta Limited are the six proposed enterprises.
In just six months after joining the education IT company, Goel resigned as Byju’s chief financial officer (CFO). His resignation comes at a critical moment for Byju’s, which is trying to obtain additional funds to continue operations even as it has not yet filed its results for the 2021–2022 fiscal year (April 2021 to March 2022). In addition, the company is having problems with lenders regarding a billion-dollar loan.
Following the completion of the FY22 audit formalities, he will transition.
Goel was appointed 16 months after Byju’s former CFO, PV Rao, resigned in December 2021. This was in April of this year.
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Source: HT
