Saurabh Agrawal, head of corporate strategy at the Aditya Birla group, has been appointed the group chief financial officer (CFO) of Tata Sons, the company said on Monday. He will join the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate from July 2017, the statement said.
Agrawal, who has been with the Aditya Birla group since April 2016, has been instrumental in pushing through UltraTech Cement’s acquisition of Jaiprakash Associate Ltd’s cement assets and also the restructuring of Grasim Ltd and Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd.
An investment banker for most of his career, Agrawal was previously regional head of corporate finance (South Asia) for Standard Chartered Bank.
Agrawal is the second investment banker to join new Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekharan’s team after Ankur Verma from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Agrawal “brings deep capital markets knowledge and valuable cross-industry experience to this critical leadership role in the Tata group,” Chandrasekharan said in the emailed statement.
“His expertise will help us in driving rigour and synergy in capital allocation decisions, investment management as well as consolidation and optimisation of the group’s business portfolio. We look forward to his contribution in driving financial performance of the group.”
Agrawal is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, and has a post-graduate management degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta.