MCX, the country’s largest commodity exchange, is yet to finalise a new MD&CEO nearly two months after the former chief PS Reddy stepped down following the completion of his five-year term on May 9.
The exchange operations are currently overseen by a special executive committee consisting of a CRO (regulatory officer), CTO (technology officer), CBO (business officer) and COO (operating officer) in the absence of MD & CEO.
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Incidentally, the start of trading at the exchange was delayed by one hour on Tuesday due to a technical issue. MCX attributed the delayed start to the slow processing of end-of-the-day jobs and the generation of backend files for the members.
Early this month, Ramesh Gurram resigned as Chief Information Security Officer and Data Protection Officer and will be relieved from duty in September.
Leadership Void
“The leadership vacuum is more critical given that the exchange recently migrated to a new trading platform developed by TCS and is among two listed exchanges,” said an analyst.
Queries sent to MCX remained unanswered until press time.
MCX is the market leader in the commodity derivatives segment with a 97 per cent share in May, according to SEBI data. It had a turnover of ₹40.99-lakh crore in May, followed by NSE’s ₹1.14-lakh crore (2.7 per cent) and the rest by NCDEX and BSE.
Selection Impasse
In February, the exchange selected three candidates to head the exchange and sent it for SEBI approval. However, SEBI rejected it without assigning any reason in March and directed the exchange to redo the entire process.
On June 21, the Board again shortlisted candidates and initiated the process of seeking regulatory approvals for the appointment, said the Kotak Mahindra Bank-backed exchange.
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As per SEBI regulation, an individual can hold the office of MD&CEO of a stock exchange for a maximum of 10 years in two terms. The maximum age limit for the post is capped at 65 years.
The previous head of MCX, Reddy had an eventful tenure of seeing the exchange through the Covid pandemic when crude oil prices for the first time tanked to negative values. Braving many obstacles, he ensured the exchange transitioned to new software vendor TCS from its former promoter 63 Moons in October last year.