Mithun Roy

MUMBAI: The Aditya Birla Group has been slowly but steadily snaring some key hands for its financial services business, which includes life insurance, mutual funds and wealth management.

While Pankaj Razdan from ICICI’s mutual fund arm ICICI Prudential came a while ago, Gautam Chainani of American Express came on board as the chief people officer of financial services while A Dhananjaya, who comes from ABN Amro Bank, is the chief risk and compliance officer.

Reliance Capital’s Ajay Kakar has been named chief marketing officer of the financial services business.

Ajay Srinivasan, chief executive of financial services, Aditya Birla Group, who himself came from ICICI Prudential in Singapore last year, said the company is trying to get the right team in place.

“Our journey has just begun. We are concentrating on building a firm foundation through key appointments in the financial services business,” he said.

The group has reasons to beef up its financial services business: business crossed the $1 billion mark in consolidated revenues in 2007-08.

Birla Sun Life Insurance achieved a first-year weighted annualised premium of Rs 2,204 crore against Rs 953 crore the year before, with revenues growing 94% to Rs 4,012 crore from Rs 2,069 crore last year.

At an analyst meet following the results, the company said its insurance business won’t be listed now.

Among private sector life insurers, Birla Sun Life’s market share has doubled from around 4% in April 2007 to about 8% in March 2008.

But the Street has taken the positives with a pinch of salt.

Reena Verma Bhasin and Rajeev Varma, analysts with Merrill Lynch, in a report on Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd on  last Friday, said EBIT losses in the BPO business, retail expansion-led losses in garments, and early-stage losses in insurance are dragging returns on capital.

An elongated cycle of investments without returns may dampen investor appetite, they said, while cutting the company’s 12-month share price target by roughly 10% to Rs 2,175.

Source : DNAIndia