Coal news and updates

New CIL CMD unlikely to be from private sector

November 7: The new Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Coal India Ltd (CIL) will most likely be from a public sector (PSU) company as the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) is believed to have received only one application from a private sector candidate.

Though ICMW could not contact the concerned official at PESB to find out the names of applicants, industry sources said the criteria fixed for being eligible for the post and compensation package offered was such that no top-level executive from any private sector company was interested in the job.

Media reports suggest that the single private sector applicant is from a Mumbai-based brokerage firm.

Only those private sector executives were eligible for applying who were working as whole-time directors/president/CEO in a listed company whose average annual turnover during the last three financial years, beginning 2011-12, was at least Rs 5,000 crore.

Though executives from non-listed companies too were allowed to apply, the condition was slightly more stringent in the sense that such companies must have a turnover of at least Rs 5,000 crore and the average annual turnover of the group company in the last three financial years must be at least Rs 10,000 crore, and the holding company or at least one of the subsidiaries of the group should be listed on a stock exchange.

“These conditions were important because CIL is a very big company and an incumbent from a small company would have found it difficult to manage the affairs. However, at the same time, the compensation package offered was not that attractive and that might have restricted applications from private sector executives,” an expert said.

“A person having worked with CIL or a mining company will find it more suitable to understand the situation in the company and also be better equipped to take it to new heights,” an industry source said.

In view of the above, it is most likely that the new CMD of CIL will be from a PSU and that too from a coal mining company, most likely from CIL itself.

It is learnt that CIL’s current Director (Technical) and Director (Personnel) are among the eight who have applied for the job.