Meet the new CEO of NSE Ashish Chauhan, creator of Nifty and father of derivatives

• SEBI approved the appointment of Ashish Chauhan as its new MD and CEO
• Chouhan had earlier worked at NSE, for seven years as its vice-president starting 1993.
• He was known as the father of modern financial derivatives as he was instrumental in setting up the NSE derivatives platform.

The markets regulator SEBI has approved the appointment of Ashish Chauhan as NSE’s new MD and CEO, on Sunday. Chouhan will give up his top job at the rival stock exchange, BSE, to join India’s largest stock exchange during turbulent times.

“The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has approved the name of Ashish

Kumar Chauhan as the MD and CEO of NSE. His appointment is subject to acceptance of the offer made to him and fulfillment of terms and conditions including approval from the shareholders of NSE,” the exchange said, in a press release.

Chouhan comes back to NSE after 22 years

The top job at NSE became vacant after former IDBI head Vikram Limaye who was heading it, did not extend his five year contract in spite of the eligibility. However, Chouhan will be more burdened by the events surrounding another former CEO of the exchange Chitra Ramakrishnan’s tenure — embroiled in money laundering amidst other controversies.

Ramakrishnan was recently arrested by the Enforcement Directorate and sent to a four day custody over illegal phone tapping in her former case.

For Chouhan this will be a second coming as he had worked at NSE, for seven years as its vice-president starting 1993. In fact, he was one of the founding fathers of the exchange and is also credited with conceptualizing the NSE derivatives platform. For this, he is constantly referred to as the father of modern financial derivatives.

He is also the creator of Nifty, and was instrumental in setting-up screen based trading. A lot of market experts believe that his appointment signals NSE’s ambitions to go public.

After he quit NSE in 2000, he worked at various positions at various Reliance group entities like Reliance Infocomm, Reliance Communications and Reliance Industries.

Chouhan even worked at Mumbai Indians briefly before joining BSE as its deputy CEO and rising to the position of CEO, in the 12 years that he worked there.

The governing board of NSE has appointed an internal executive committee comprising of Yatrik Vin, Group CFO head of corporate affairs; Priya Subbaraman as the chief regulatory officer, and more; to run the affairs in the interim. This committee will be dissolved once the new CEO assumes charge, it said.

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