Devas Multimedia gets new chairman Lawrence T Babbio ?

Bangalore: The ‘controversial’ Devas Multimedia Services Ltd appointed Lawrence T Babbio as the new chairman of its board in place of MG Chandrasekhar who resigned from the post on 16 March.

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“The board has accepted Chandrasekhar’s resignation with regret and appreciated his leader.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.

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“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.

IANS