E&Y top brass to attend India meet

Ernst & Young's (E&Y) global  chairman,  Jim Turley,  and chief executive officer, Rick Bobrow, are scheduled to attend the firm's India partners' meeting scheduled later this month.

This is the first time that the leading professional services firm's seniormost executives  will be in India together.

The top leadership will be further complemented by Nick Land, area managing partner, UK region, Paul Ostling, Executive partner on the Global Executive Board, Norbert Becker, Chief Financial Officer,  Jean Charles Raufast, Global managing partner for Integration (with Andersen), and about 8 other senior partners from the US, UK, Asia Pacific, Africa and Middle-East.

“We are indeed excited and proud to host the international leadership. Their presence will make an immeasurable contribution to the Indian firm,” Kashi Memani, chairman, Ernst & Young India, said.

The presence of the global leadership is expected to take the discussions to a more international or regional role for E&Y India and its people.

Industry watchers view these visits as a sign of the growing commitment from Ernst & Young Global to its Indian arm.

Since the announcement of integration with Andersen India in May, 2002, E&Y India has increased its size and position significantly.

Its corporate finance arm has just been ranked topmost in number of transactions during 2002 by a recently released survey from Bloomberg, the information services provider.

"Both our clients and our people will benefit from the increased knowledge sharing with the global firm," Memani added.

In fact, in the last 3 months, there has been quite a complement of leading international faces visiting India.

Some of these include David Robinson, Global Head of Human Capital services, Donn Szaro, Global leader for the Healthsciences, Steve Parkinson, who heads Transaction Support, Robert Center, global head of the Japan Business Services, Rod Sayer, who leads the Energy trading team from UK and Lisa Fluentes from the EY Global Learning Center at Cleveland.

Richard Wilson, the global leader for the Energy, Chemicals and Utilities segment is also expected in March.

Meetings with industry and clients as also training programmes for E&Y people are the primary reasons for these visits.

"It has been very encouraging and we are also being increasingly tapped for sending our people on international secondments," adds Memani.