Devas Multimedia gets new chairman

Bangalore, March 30 (IANS) The controversial Devas Multimedia Services Ltd appointed Lawrence T. Babbio as the new chairman of its board in place of M.G. Chandrasekhar who resigned from the post March 16, the company said Friday.

"The board has accepted Chandrasekhar's resignation with regret and appreciated his leadership during his tenure as chairman," the company said in a belated statement here.

Chandrasekhar will, however, continue to serve the company as a director.

"Chandrasekhar stepped down from the post for personal reasons," a company source told IANS on anonymity.

Babbio is a former vice-chairman and president of Verizon, a leading telecom operator in the US with $110 billion in revenues.

Babbio is also a senior advisor to Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm that has invested $40 billion in various global firms, including in Bharti Televentures, a leading mobile operator in India.

"We look to Babbio's leadership as the company moves forward," the statement added.

A former senior scientist of the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Chandrasekhar was at the helm when Devas signed the controversial $300-million contract in January 2005 with Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of the space agency, for using the scarce S-band spectrum (radio waves) for providing space-based digital services to organizations and enterprises.

The government, however, scrapped the contract in February 2011 following the controversy on Devas being awarded on non-competitive bidding.