The decision to appoint him as the MD and CEO was taken in the HDFC Mutual Fund’s board meeting on Monday, according to a stock exchange disclosure. SBI Mutual — the country’s largest fund house with Assets Under Management (AUM) of Rs 4.2 lakh crore — is yet to announce Munot’s replacement.
Munot’s crossover from fund management to the corner office comes after handling investor money for almost two decades. He has been the CIO of SBI Mutual for 12 years, when the fund house soared to the position of the country’s biggest in assets.
Before SBI Mutual, he was a fund manager at Morgan Stanley Asset Management and CIO-fixed income at Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund. Munot joins the list of CIOs such as Kotak Mutual Fund’s Nilesh Shah and Aditya Birla Mutual Fund’s A Balasubramanian who went on to become CEOs.
Sources said Munot’s pay package in HDFC Mutual would be similar to what Barve is drawing. As on March 31, Barve’s total salary was Rs 6.45 crore and held 10.4 lakh shares in stock options valued at about Rs 255 crore as per HDFC AMC’s closing price on Friday. Munot’s latest remuneration in SBI Mutual could not be ascertained though industry officials said it was about Rs 5 crore.
“The salary plus stock options is a big attraction for the HDFC AMC’s CEO position, but for Navneet Munot, the movement from the CIO of the biggest fund to the CEO of the second biggest fund makes a lot of sense because he would have never been a CEO in SBI Mutual,” said the CEO of a large mutual fund. The post of a CEO in SBI Mutual is open only to the bank’s senior officers on deputation to the subsidiary.
Industry officials said, in HDFC Mutual, Munot could face a stiff task of finding his feet as a newcomer to the group. HDFC Mutual fund’s veteran CIO Prashant Jain, who is the public face of the fund house, has been with the company since 2003. Chirag Setalvad, another senior fund manager, has been with HDFC Mutual since 2007.
“Navneet Munot has to find his space in the midst of tenured bigwigs,” said a senior mutual fund industry official. “It will not be easy but the good part is he understands fund management and has a good head on his shoulders.”
