Emami Ltd’s board is set to meet tomorrow, the first time since the fire at Dhakuria’s Advance Medicare and Research Institute (AMRI) Hospital, in which the Emami Group has a majority stake. But of the 14 board members, three—R S Agarwal, R S Goenka and S K Todi— are in custody and the police is on the look out for two, Aditya Agarwal and Preeti Sureka.
While R S Agarwal is the promoter and executive chairman, R S Goenka is promoter and non-executive chairman and S K Todi is an independent director.
Though five of the members will not be able to attend the meeting, experts say it will not prevent the firm from taking any investment or policy decision, even though tomorrow’s board meeting is just to take on record and approve the company’s results.
“As per the Company Law, the board can hold a board meeting if one third of the members are present. So even if five of them are not there, it will hardly matter. They have to select one of the directors to chair the meeting,” said Ashok Pareek, council member, the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.
According to sources, as R S Agarwal and R S Goenka are in custody, other Emami family members on the board Mohan Goenka or Harsh Agarwal may chair the meeting.
“On tomorrow’s attendance, we have sent board meeting notices to all members and we have received intimation for leave of absence from two of the directors. Any one director from among the members present can be elected to become a chairman, if the executive chairman is unable to attend the meeting,” said N H Bhansali, chief executive officer of finance, strategy and business development of the firmThe firm had posted a 5.1 per cent drop in its net profit to Rs 50.64 crore during the second quarter of the financial year 2011-12 ended on September 30, as compared to Rs 53.35 crore during the same period last fiscal.
“Compared to competitors, Emami may not see a decline in its margins this quarter. Sales will also see a rise as it has a good collection of winter products and the quarter was good for those products. Moreover, the prices of raw materials like menthol were less compared to the previous quarter. And by no means, the AMRI incident will have an impact on the company as it has a separate professional management team,” said Shirish Pardesi, a senior analyst at Mumbai-based brokerage Anand Rathi.
