The past couple of months has seen the exodus of quite a few senior people from the brokerage industry. According to market observers, these departures are nothing out of the ordinary and are part of the usual attrition that happens every year.
Some of the recent exits include Kedar Deshpande, business head – retail, Edelweiss Securities; Jitendra Panda, senior VP ? retail, Motilal Oswal Financial Securities; Manish Shah, associate director and head of equity at Motilal Oswal and Girish Dev, CEO, Networth Stock Broking. Santhosh Unikkat, senior VP at ICICI Securities is rumoured to be joining Reliance Money as CEO.
Deshpande will be joining Karvy Stock Broking as the business head of retail broking, while Girish Dev has joined Future Group as a board member on FCH Centrum Wealth Managers, the erstwhile joint venture between Future Capital and the Centrum Group. Panda and Shah are serving their notice period and did not disclose the names of organisations they were headed to.
Apart from these exits, several others have quit in the past 2-3 months. Hitungshu Debnath, executive director of Angel Broking has moved to Tata Asset Management as country head – sales and marketing, while Ambareesh Baliga, vice-president of Karvy Stock Broking has joined Way2Wealth as its chief operating officer. Devesh Kumar, CEO of Fortune Financial Services India recently joined the RBS Group as its head of equities.
Annual bonuses at several brokerages this year are likely to be delayed, say market participants. Also, bonuses at some brokerages could be almost half that of the usual amount ? typically 5-6 months? salary ? doled out every year. There is likely to be more churn once the bonuses are given out some time in June, according to some people in the industry.
It?s been a tough year for brokerages as retail participants have stayed away from the market and cash volumes have plummeted. Also, action has shifted to low-yield options segment, impacting margins. Margins in retail and institutional broking have remained under pressure, some businesses such as commodities have bucked the trend. The commodities business has grown 20-25% in the past year as average daily commodity turnover on exchanges has risen by more than 50%, according to market observers.