Vishal Sikka on Friday resigned as the chief executive (CEO) and managing director (MD) of Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software services company. While the board of Infosys accepted the resignation of Sikka with immediate effect and appointed U B Pravin Rao as the interim CEO & MD, Sikka has been appointed the executive vice-chairman of the company.

In a BSE filing, Infosys said Sikka reiterated his belief in the great potential of Infosys, but cited among his reasons to leave a continuous stream of "distractions and disruptions over the recent months and quarters, increasingly personal and negative as of late, as preventing management's ability to accelerate the Company's transformation”.

Infosys said its board would meet on August 19 to discuss and take a call on the share buyback plan as the company received Sebi's approval for the same.

“We would like to inform you pursuant to Regulation 29 (1)(b) of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, that the Board of Directors of Infosys Ltd will consider a proposal for buyback of equity shares of the company at its meeting to be held on August 19, 2017,” said the IT services firm in a filing to the BSE. Infosys said it would inform the outcomes of the board meeting to the exchanges.

The two IT majors TCS and Infosys are on the radar of Sandip Bhatia, Head – India Equities, Macquarie Capital Securities. In conversation with ET Now, the expert said that the investors should look to buying these stocks from the IT space on dips. The year hasn’t been great for the these two majors, as both of them have underperformed the equity benchmark Sensex by a huge margin. While TCS has returned a paltry 4.39% in the year, Infosys has given negative returns of 2.8% since January this year. According to Bhatia, the markets are still offering buying opportunities at every dip.

Infosys and Wipro from the IT industry were trading in the green on Friday morning, even as the benchmark indices and broader markets were trading in the red. The Infosys share opened at Rs 976 and went on to hit the day’s high of Rs 997 on NSE. Asian Pants, L&T and ONGC plunged by more than 2%. Sensex shed more than 300 points, while the Nifty had hit a low of 9,704 in the morning trade. The Sensex opened at 31,355 and soon dived to the day’s low of 31,194.87.

Software services firm Infosys has said it would acquire London-based firm Brilliant Basics for Rs 62.76 crore (£7.5 million).

The Bengaluru-based Indian IT services major said the acquisition of the firm that specialises in customer experience and product design would help it expand design-based technology services in Europe and West Asia.

The ongoing tussle between NR Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, and the board turned murkier as the veteran has reportedly asked the findings of the law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas relating to corporate governance lapses to be made public. Earlier,Infosys had hired Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas to review the corporate governance practices in the company. The law firm was to gather inputs from the promoters and other key stakeholders and evaluate them to make recommendations to the board. Previously, the founders had raised issues pertaining to the quantum of salary hike given to the CEO Vishal Sikka and the size of the severance packages given to former CFO Rajiv Bansal and former General Counsel David Kennedy.

Infosys Co-Chairman Ravi Venkatesan on Sunday said that the company could be 10 times as large as it is today if it could execute well to harness advances in digital and machine learning.

"There is a huge opportunity to use advances in digital and machine learning- and all these areas. Infosys should be ten times as large as we are if only we can execute well," he said.

The latest financial performance of the big three of Indian IT industry—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) , Infosys and Wipro—underscores the fact that the macro-economic challenges still persist with business momentum not picking up and net profits dropping. In short, the prospects of a double digit growth rate is still far away. The first quarter of FY18 for this top three companies has been consistent on one point —declining net profits. If TCS’s net profit dropped on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis by 10%, it was 3.3% for Infosys and 8% in the case of Wipro. The twin factors which affected their bottomline performance were wages hikes and the appreciating rupee against the US dollar.

Infosys, India's second-largest software exporter said its first-quarter profits grew 1.4 per cent to Rs 3,483 crore and revenue grew 1.8 per cent to Rs 17,078 crore, on the back of improved operation controls, even as business from its main markets remain muted.

Infosys had posted a profit of Rs 3,436 crore and revenue of Rs 16,782 crore in the same period last year.

The heavyweight IT companies TCS and Infosys have capped the previous two-day gains and are dragging the Nifty IT index down ahead of the first quarter earnings. Stocks of IT companies mostly trade up except TCS which was down 0.89% at Rs 2,453.8 while Infosys shares were mostly flat, down 0.11% at Rs 974.25. NSE’s Nifty IT index trade slightly under pressure, down 0.14% at 10,415.1 points.

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