The board of UTI Asset Management Company met on Monday to finalise the selection process to appoint a chief executive officer for the firm. Imtaiyazur Rahman is acting as the interim CEO at present.
UTI MF?s board of directors includes PR Khanna, Sachit Jain, Pradeep Gupta, PN Venkatachalam, James Sellers Riepe and Flemming Madsen. The board would be keen on ensuring that the selection process is seen as transparent this time round and the new appointment is made as soon as possible.
However, the final selection is likely to take about 4-5 months, according to a person familiar with the matter.
He added that the fund house will invite applications through advertisements placed in the print media to widen the search process.
UTI MF?s average assets under management declined a little over 12% to R58,922 crore for the fiscal year ended 2012 from R67,189 crore in the previous fiscal and it ceded its fourth position to Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund. The benchmark BSE Sensex fell 10.5% in FY12. The fund house?s performance was affected as it couldn?t launch new fund offers for almost a year after the departure of its chairman UK Sinha in February 2009. After remaining headless for nearly a year, Imtaiyazur Rahman was appointed interim CEO in January 2012. The fund house, which occupied the numero uno slot till FY06 in terms of the assets it managed, slipped to the number 3 position at the end of FY07 and subsequently to number 4 in FY09.
Last year, the selection process was mired in controversy as civil servant Jitesh Khosla emerged a front-runner for the post despite the fact that his name did not figure in the list of probable candidates drawn up by executive search firm Egon Zehnder.
Khosla had stints in the ministry of finance and corporate affairs and is the brother of Omita Paul, advisor to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Investment management firm T Rowe Price, UTI?s largest shareholder, had protested against the alleged attempts to influence the selection process to favour bureaucrat Khosla.