The AMC’s board has recommended to its shareholders names of three candidates for the position of chairman and managing director, two persons familiar with the development.
The shortlisted candidates are AIG India chief executive and country head Sunil Mehta, senior advisor at McKinsey & Co in India Leo Puri, and Punita Kumar Sinha, former senior managing director of Blackstone Group’s India-focused mutual fund.
UTI AMC, which runs India’s fifth largest mutual fund, has not had a full-fledged chairman since UK Sinha left UTI to become the head of market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India in February 2011.
Sinha’s departure was followed by an unseemly row between the finance ministry and T Rowe Price over the choice of his successor. While the finance ministry pushed for the appointment of Jitesh Khosla, a 1979 batch IAS officer and brother of Omita Paul, the powerful advisor of former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, as the UTI AMC chairman, T Rowe Price insisted that a professional should be appointed.