By IANS,
Kolkata: Kumar Mangalam Birla, the chairman of the $29.2 billion (Rs.1.4 trillion) Aditya Birla Group Thursday said he has no plans to join the board of B.K. Birla group’s company Kesoram Industries Limited or Century Enka in the near future.
Speculations had been making rounds for very long that K.M. Birla would take charge of these companies from his octogenarian grandfather B.K. Birla.
But K.M. Birla ruled out any such possibilities. Asked whether he would make his entry into the board of these two companies within couple of years’ time, he said: “No plans. Not as of now.”
He was speaking on the sidelines of the 28th National Conference of the National Institute of Personnel Management.
In the last annual general meeting of Kesoram, B.K. Birla said: “The whole company will remain one.”
The company would go to Kumar Mangalam Birla in the future and B.K. Birla’s daughter Manjushree Khaitan would continue to remain on the board.
He added: “In my absence, the future of the company will be decided by Kumar Mangalam Birla and Manjushree Khaitan.”
Asked about a recent report that Aditya Birla Group has decided to re-enter the power sector by purchasing an existing project, K.M. Birla said: “We have no plans of venturing into power sector.”
The Aditya Birla group exited its power ventures, Rosa Power Supply Co. Ltd and Bina Power Supply Co. Ltd by 2007, selling them to Reliance Energy Ltd and Jaiprakash Associates Ltd, respectively.
Earlier, while addressing the conference, he said: “We plan to make it a $65 billion conglomerate by 2015.”