Edu-leaders

Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej has been elected as the Chairman of the Indian School of Business (ISB), succeeding Rajat Gupta, who resigned last month after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slapped insider trading charges on him.

Godrej was unanimously elected the chairman by the executive board at its meeting, attended by 14 of its 32 members.

The board accepted the resignation of Indian American businessman Gupta, who co-founded ISB a decade ago and had since served as its chairman.

On March 21, Gupta had requested the board that he be relieved of his responsibilities.

He did not agree that ISB's image was affected by the allegations against Gupta or former dean Rammohan Rao. "ISB's image is still very strong. I don't think its image affected in any way," he said.

He said neither Gupta nor Rao were involved in any scam whatsoever. Rao, who was independent director of Satyam Computer Services Limited, resigned as dean after the IT firms accounting scam came to light.

Godrej said that since there was some administrative action taken against Gupta by the SEC, he took pre-emptive step of resigning from the board.

"The school should continue its level of excellence established in the past. It has been ranked among the top 20 business schools by the Financial Times and if any issue arises with anybody connected with ISB, quick action will be taken and that has been done and will continue to be done," he added.

The ISB, which has a standard strength of 560, would increase the batch size by 210 when its second campus at Mohali opens next year, he said.