Rahman to be UTI MF interim CEO

Imtaiyazur Rahman, the chief financial officer of UTI Asset Management, has been chosen the fund house’s acting CEO, till a new chairman and managing director is appointed.

The board of directors met in New Delhi on Thursday and cleared his candidature. Rahman will look after the day-to-day operations of the company and would work closely with rest of the senior leadership team at UTI.

Imtaiyazur Rahman is FICWA, FCS and CPA (USA). He has 17 years of experience in finance, accounts, taxation, administration, IT, operations, HR and secretarial functions. He has worked with Bells Controls, Leasing Finance India, Sumeet Machines and UTI TSL. He has been with UTI AMC since 2003 as company secretary and is looking after investment accounts, AMC-accounts, IT and secretarial functions of the fund house.

Along with him, P N Venkatachalam, former managing director of State Bank of India, has been appointed as independent director on the board.

The fund house has been losing investors and has been pushed to fifth place in asset ranking, with average assets under management of Rs 57,817 crore. In the December quarter alone, it saw an erosion of 14 per cent.

Rahman was part of the management committee formed to run the day-to-day affairs of UTI MF after U K Sinha took over as Sebi chairman.

UTI AMC officials, including CMO Jaideep Bhattacharya, head (equity) Anoop Bhaskar and head (fixed income) Amandeep Chopra, were other members of the committee, which worked under guidance of the committee of directors and the company’s board. Though day-to-day affairs were taken care of by this committee, the fund house could not launch new schemes in the absence of a CEO. Since Sebi refused to clear new schemes, the fund house had to sit out of the new FMP launches that raised over Rs 1 lakh crore in 2011.

Appointment of a regular chief is stuck due to disagreement between the fund house’s largest investor T Rowe Price, which owns 26 per cent and the four PSU shareholders. Though SBI, PNB, LIC and BoB hold less than T Rowe, they together control 74 per cent in the company. The finance ministry, which controls these firms, is said to be in favour of a bureaucrat to head UTI, while T Rowe prefers a professional.