While Veritas’ Neeraj Monga has been hogging the limelight, like always, after his latest report on Indiabulls group, many would have forgotten that the report had two authors. While Monga is the face of Veritas in India and around the world, Nitin Mangal, his co-author, has largely remained in the background.
But, Mangal plays a key role, according to Monga. Mangal started working with Veritas early this year and is the numbers man. The recent Indiabulls report titled ‘Bilking India’ is the second Veritas report Mangal has co-authored with Monga. The first report was on realty major DLF in March.
“Nitin is in charge of fact finding and data integrity. Given his CA from India, I defer to Nitin for his accounting input. He is also our man on the ground,” Monga said in an email.
Nitin has been integral to our success in India, he added.
Prior to doing work for Veritas, Mangal was with Indian brokerage Edelweiss Capital. Edelweiss had set up a non-conventional research unit called Analysis Beyond Consensus (ABC).
In his LinkedIn profile, Mangal said he is “the first and core team member for establishing the differentiated research platform under the brand ABC (Analysis Beyond Consensus).”
The ABC team focused on developing products with respect to “Annual report analysis of large-cap companies, structural policy reforms: GST, direct tax code, IFRS, etc. Impact of change in macro environment: foreign currency convertible bonds , derivatives, exchange fluctuation, impairment of goodwill, etc,” Mangal said in his LinkedIn profile.
Vishal Goyal, Mangal’s ex-colleague in Edelweiss ABC team, said Mangal was “hardworking, diligent and sharp”. He is a chartered accountant, and hence, is strong with numbers and annual reports, Goyal said.
Mangal seemed to have cut his teeth at Edelweiss ABC, which his former colleagues, say worked on thematic reports. “We worked on accounting choices of companies which were not conservative. We brought them out in a subtle way. Our language was less defaming,” a former ABC analyst said.
A former colleagues first declined knowledge of Mangal. When pushed referring to a report they had co-authored, he said this need not necessarily be the same person. “There can be more than one Nitin Mangals,” he said like a true Indian equity analyst.
Mangal did not respond to e-mail requests seeking comments. He also did not share his photograph with Business Standard. After spending his school and college years in Indore, Mangal joined accounting firm Batliboi Purohit in 2001. He had short stints in the corporate sector with KEC International and ACC before moving to Edelweiss.
Monga has used two different partners in the past: Varun Raj, a summer intern from a Toronto B-school, helped him with the reports on Ambani brothers titled “RIL, RCom Brothers in Arms misappropriating a fortune” and Kingfisher Airlines titled “ A pie in the sky” in 2011.
In June, Jaishankar Krishnamurthy, a former analyst with Brics Securities and a consulting editor with Outlook Profit, co-authored the report titled “A house of cards”on Reliance Communications.
While Mangal’s LinkedIn profile describes his career history elaborately, it is little cryptic about his current position. It lists him as managing director, Trudom Investment Research.
While Veritas means truth, it’s not very clear what Trudom means and why Mangal uses this name in his public profile.
