Bengaluru: B.G. Srinivas, who quit Infosys on Wednesday, is set to join Hong Kong-based telecommunications, media and IT businesses group PCCW Limited as its group managing director and executive director, according to a filing made by PCCW to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Mr Srinivas’ appointment goes into effect on July 14, with an annual basic salary of $1.14 million, a housing allowance and a non-discretionary annual bonus of $180,000 and performance-based incentives. PCCW says Mr Srinivas had shown no interest in stock options.
PCCW, a $3.5 billion entity with no presence in India, calls itself a quadruple play company, selling media content and services to fixed line, broadband Internet, mobile and TV and has an arm that sells ICT services to enterprises and government entities.
PCCW Solutions, the group’s IT services and BPO division was earlier called Unihub and owned by Wen Yunsong, son of former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say that Srinivas quit Infosys on hearing that executive search firm Egon Zehnder had recommended the name of Malcolm Frank, executive VP and strategy and marketing boss at Cognizant Technology Solutions to Infosys’ CEO nominations committee.
Mr Frank, who impressed many in the Indian IT industry with a lucid presentation at the Nasscom Leadership Forum in February this year, is a well-known as the man behind Cognizant’s 2015 strategy and the Horizon 3 strategy, which succeeded where Infosys struggled with its own Infosys 3.0 strategy and helped the US-based outsourcing company speed past Bengaluru’s IT giants in revenues.
That Mr Frank’s thinking is much in line with Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy’s — on such ideas as the ‘social workplace of the future’, that automation will not upend Indian IT services companies any time soon, etc — should ensure that Infosys makes a juicy offer to him — the 47-year-old Yale economics graduate earned a cool $2.83 million in 2013 and is regarded as Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza’s key lieutenant — although whether Mr Frank will take the bait is another matter.
