ADAG ropes in ACC’s Sumit Banerjee to drive cement foray

SUMIT Banerjee, managing director of the country's largest cement company, ACC, is all set to spearhead the Anil Ambani group's proposed foray into cement business. Widely credited with ACC's growth in the past three years, Mr Banerjee, 54, will fill in the vacancy that was created due to the resignation of Anil Singhvi from the Ambani Group early this month.
    Mr Banerjee will join the power-to-telecom conglomerate on August 1 as chairman of Reliance Cementation, said a person close to the matter. Mr Banerjee could not be contacted. Text messages sent to his mobile remained unanswered. The ACC spokesperson said: "The company does not comment on market speculations."
    Anil Ambani group had floated Reliance Cementation two years ago as a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra), that runs power generation, distribution and transmission businesses, to implement its ambitious plan in India's cement market, the world's second-largest after China. India has an annual cement capacity of 260 million tonne and a growth rate of 10% per year.
    Although, Reliance Cementation has signed a few MoUs with state governments, its proposed foray into the cement business by using huge amount of fly ash that would be produced as byproducts of the group's power projects has not made much headway. Arvind Pathak, former ACC western region head, is its CEO.
    "We have plans to set up cement capacity of 20 million tonne per annum with an investment of nearly Rs 10,000 crore over the next five years. This will make us one among the top five cement players in the country," Mr Ambani had told the shareholders of R-Infra in 2009.
    The Swiss cement giant Holcim brought in Mr Banerjee in ACC after it acquired the company. Mr Banerjee, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, joined as ACC's managing director on April 1, 2007, when ML Narula retired after four decades of service. Prior to joining ACC, he was the managing director of Tube Investments. Under his tenure, ACC's topline grew 20% to Rs 9,479 crore and bottomline 10% to Rs 1,564 crore.
    Anil Singhvi, who was spearheading a planned foray into the cement business by the group, left early this month to join I-Can Investment Advisors where he had worked for one year. The 49-year-old former Gujarat Ambuja CEO had relinquished his executive responsibilities, but would continue to be the vice-chairman of Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) and work as a consultant for the group. CONCRETE PLANS
Mr Banerjee will fill in the vacancy that was created due to the exit of Anil Singhvi from ADAG Anil Ambani group had floated Reliance Cementation two years ago as a subsidiary of R-Infra to implement its ambitious plan in the country's cement market