MCX appoints V Balasubramaniam as MD and CEO

He is currently the Chief Business Officer of the Bombay Stock Exchange

Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), India’s largest commodity derivatives trading platform, has decided to appoint Balasubramaniam Venkataramani as managing director and chief executive officer.

The appointment, is subject to approval of the regulator, Forward Markets Commission (FMC) and shareholders, the exchange said in a note to the BSE.

The decision to appoint Venkataramani, currently chief business officer at BSE, was taken at an MCX’s board meeting on Friday.

A postgraduate in commerce from the University of Mumbai, Venkataramani’s foray into stock exchange management began when he joined the core team of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in October 1993 and was involved in the setting up of the exchange. His role at NSE included establishing trading systems for the equity segment, creation of indices and introduction of the equity derivatives segment, among others.

Venkataramani was co-founder of Marketplace Technologies, a front-end technology platform then promoted by Ashish Chavan, now the managing director of BSE. He later sold this technology to BSE.

MCX has been without a managing director since May 2014, when Manoj Vaish left.

After Vaish’s exit, P K Singhal was promoted as joint managing director. In the second half of 2013, the exchange's business was affected due to the imposition of the commodities transaction tax, fallout of the National Spot Exchange default, and the FMC not approving its contracts.

However, volumes are now rising and trading participation has increased, with the exchange regaining its lost market share.