Infosys Names Capgemini Exec As Next CEO Following Heated Leadership Feud

IT outsourcing heavyweight Infosys has named Salil Parekh, a 25-year Capgemini veteran and a member of the company's executive board, as it's next chief executive after a public clash involving the company's co-founder and board resulted in the sudden resignation earlier this year of former CEO Vishal Sikka.

Parekh will take over as CEO and managing director of the $10 billion company effective Jan. 2, the Bangalore, India-based solution provider announced Saturday, replacing interim CEO U.B. Pravin Rao, who will return to his previously-held role of COO.

Parekh had been with Capgemini, No. 6 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, since its 2000 acquisition of Ernst and Young's consulting business. He resigned in October in light of what the company at the time called "recent managerial evolutions." He has close to three decades of IT services experience, most recently serving on Capgemini's Executive Board.

[Related: Infosys Co-Founder Takes Control of Board As Ex-CEO Cuts All Ties With Firm ]

"He has a strong track record of executing business turnarounds and managing very successful acquisitions. The Board believes that he is the right person to lead Infosys at this transformative time in our industry," Infosys Board Chairman Nandan Nilekani said in a statement.

Ex-CEO Sikka penned a shocking resignation letter to Infosys employees in August that decried an environment of "continuous… distractions and negativity." Some of those criticisms were attributed to company co-founder and former chairman NR Narayana Murthy, who claimed in recent emails that Infosys' independent directors felt that Sikka was more CTO material than CEO material.

"I cannot carry out my job as CEO and continue to create value, while also constantly defending against unrelenting, baseless/malicious and increasingly personal attacks," Sikka wrote in the letter.

The Infosys board released a statement soon after denouncing "the unfounded personal attacks on the members of our management team that were made in the anonymous letters."

Co-chairman Ravi Venkatesana said on an August call with investors that a whistleblower had raised concerns about falling standards of governance at Infosys. The company responded by bringing in independent investigators, who didn't find any shred of evidence whatsoever, he said.

Later that August, Infosys co-founder and former CEO Nandan Nilekani was named as chairman of the board, which caused the resignations of previous board chairman R Seshasayee, Sikka, and two other directors from the board. A group of 12 institutional investors applauded Nilekani's return in a letter, calling his credentials key in restoring investor confidence.

The public leadership shakeup saw Infosys' stock price drop more than 9 percent. Some in the investment community, such as Moneycontrol's Dinesh Rohira, believe Infosys stock could begin traiding 2 to 4 percent higher when markets open Monday morning.

Under Sikka, Infosys set a goal of hitting $20 billion in revenue by 2020, but the outsourcing giant reported revenue growth guidance of just 6.1 percent to 8.1 percent for the current fiscal year. Technology Business Research analyst Boz Hristov wrote in April that the company's retail and consumer business accounted for just 15 percent of company revenue despite the acquisition of e-commerce platform Skava two years ago.

Maintaining a staff of more than 200,000 employees, Infosys specializes in IT consulting, business process outsourcing and services, including cloud, big data and artificial intelligence solutions.