Post merger, Kishore Biyani is MD Bharti Retail

A day after Kishore and Rakesh Biyani stepped down as managing director and joint managing director Future Retail, the company announced the reconstitution and demerger details of the boards of Bharti Retail and Future Retail. This was part of Future Group’s acquisition of the retail business of Bharti Retail in May last year.

The new board of Bharti Retail, which will hold all the front-end retail chains such as Big Bazaar, EasyDay, FBB, Foodhall, Home Town and eZone, will include Kishore Biyani as MD and Rakesh Biyani as JMD. Bharti Retail will be later renamed Future Retail. Its board will include industry leaders Ravi Dhariwal, Gagan Singh and Shailendra Bhandari. Rajan Mittal, Vice Chairman and MD, Bharti Enterprises, will continue to serve as a member of the board of Bharti Retail.

The combined company will be divided into two. The first, Future Retail, will handle the front-end affairs and handle 570 stores. It will have a presence in multiple retail formats across 243 cities. The second one, to be listed as Future Enterprises, will be the back-end, investments and infrastructure business. Both the companies will be listed on the stock exchange.

The restructuring process took around a year. In May last year, Future Group merged its retail business with Bharti Retail in an all-stock deal to create one of the biggest supermarket chains in the country with a turnover of Rs 15,000 crores.

Arvind Singhal, Founder of retail consultancy Technopak believes that now Kishore Biyani will be in a good position to take advantage of the situation if the government gives its nod for FDI in made in India food retail.