Bangalore: A day after the momentous decision on NR Narayana Murthy's successor, the 65-year-old chairman of Infosys Technologies met Forbes India's Mitu Jayashankar in his office in the company's Electronic City campus. Shortly after the interview, Murthy set off to London to attend a global board meeting on May 4, after which he left for Los Angeles to see his granddaughter, who was born at 7 pm on April 27. Excerpts:
Jayashankar: S (Kris) Gopalakrishnan has said that the market is very volatile and you dont have the visibility you had in the past. One of the things you stressed is predictability. Is there any discussion inside Infosys that it must move away from giving guidance?
Murthy: I will say what my philosophy is. The company may move away from it when I leave in August. My belief has been that if Im the CEO, I must know what the target for the quarter is " top line and bottom line " and for the whole year.
In a company like ours, in the earlier days, there were lots of shareholders who were also employees. If we dont announce [the target] to the public at large, there could be asymmetry of information. It would lead to insider trading. Therefore, before we listed, in 1993, I said that we should give guidance, both for the quarter and for the year. We are the only company that does it. It is not mandatory that Infosys needs to follow
12:40 PM, May 16, 2011
The auditing firm was reacting to the allegation made by SFIO. ... 
