Kalpana Morparia appointed as first woman director of HUL

Kalpana Morparia on 9 October 2014 was appointed as first woman director of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)

She was appointed as Director so as to meet  the deadline set under the sub-section (1) of the Section 149 of the Companies Act, 2013.

She will be the member of the audit and corporate social responsibility committees of the HUL board with immediate effect. Kalpana Morparia is serving as chief executive officer (CEO) of J.P. Morgan India. Now, she was inducted as an independent director on its board.

Morparia is also a member of the J.P. Morgan Asia Pacific management committee. Morparia is an independent director on the boards of several companies including Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd, Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd, Phillip Morris International Inc. and CMC Ltd.

Earlier, Morparia served as vice-chair on the boards of ICICI Group companies. She was joint managing director of ICICI Group from 2001 to 2007.

About Section 149 of the Companies Act, 2013

Woman director on the Board

For the purposes of second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 149 the following class of companies shall appoint at least one woman director within the period indicated against each of them, as under:

(i)every listed company- within one year from the commencement of second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 149;

(ii) every other company having a paid-up share capital of one hundred crore rupees or more– within three years from the commencement of second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 149.

Recently, SEBI relaxed various provisions of the new law to ease the process of implementing stronger corporate governance norms by listed firms. SEBI extended the deadline for appointing at least one woman director to 1 April 2015.