January was an eventful month for A.M. Naik, chairman and managing director, L&T. The spotlight was firmly on the 66-year-old for a host of reasons— first due to L&T’s obvious interest in acquiring Satyam, then came the Padma Bhushan recognition and finally the company’s stellar performance in the third quarter against all odds.
Name: A.M. Naik
Age: 66
Designation: CMD, Larsen & Toubro |
An extrovert, Naik may well be enjoying all the attention he is getting. Says an old associate: “He likes being in the limelight.” A people’s person and a hands-on boss, Naik has been personally spearheading the company’s various initiatives. Says D. Morada, General Manager, L&T: “A natural leader, he ends up being in the pole position.” Under Naik’s stewardship, L&T has emerged as an engineering and construction behemoth with a presence across key sectors like power and capital goods, even as it exited unrelated businesses like cement, tractors and glass containers along the way.
His critics, too, would concede that Naik has been instrumental in L&T’s march forward over the last few years. Naik’s passion and zeal for his work is legendary. He has a punishing schedule and puts in 16 to 18 hours a day. Says Morada: “He actually took his first holiday 22 years after joining the company.” And even that too was due to a special occasion—the birth of his granddaughter.
His hard work, perhaps, explains the meteoric rise of Naik. A small town boy from Andhel in Gujarat, Naik joined L&T as a junior engineer in 1965. He rose to the rank of CEO and MD in 1999 and eventually became the CMD in 2003.
But has Naik bitten off more than he can chew by attempting to scale up operations in IT (L&T already has an IT subsidiary, L&T Infotech) through the Satyam acquisition? Says an IT analyst with a leading brokerage: “It’s a calculated risk. While there are some business synergies with their own IT operations, Naik will have to carefully analyse whether it makes business sense for L&T. There is the danger of lawsuits and clients deserting Satyam.” We will know soon whether Naik can pull it off, and he himself would be the first to take responsibility whatever the outcome. As he told BT recently, “I have always taken my own decisions. In my world, the buck stops with me.”
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Rishi Joshi
