In the last 17 years with O&M, John Goodman has worked in more than 20 countries. But the 46-year-old Briton, who came to India in November 2003 as CEO India and South Asia and shared responsibilities with Chairman Piyush Pandey, says he's sad about leaving India for Japan, where he'll be the boss for O&M Group. "India was very interesting and was very exciting in terms of staff development. I think what we have succeeded in doing over the last three years has been to create a strong creative team and put in place a more efficient agency," he says. Japan, says the football and horse-racing enthusiast, is a very different market in terms of lifestyle and business. The good thing: He is no stranger to the land of the rising sun, having worked there earlier. Besides, the hobby reggae DJ will get to, once again, karaoke. So long, John.

Cheered By The Beans

About six months ago when Costa Coffee opened its first India store in Delhi, its CEO Mark Phillips was warned that India was a tea drinking nation, not coffee. Nine additional stores on in Delhi, Phillips, 48, is glad that he ignored the Cassandras. "India is fantastic, even more exciting and vibrant than I expected," says the man who runs UK's largest and most profitable coffee chain. He means it. Over the next three years, Costa Coffee plans to open 300 outlets. That's three-fourths the number of outlets it has in the UK. Phillips had better watch out, though. The 800-pound gorilla of coffee business, Starbucks, is on its way too.

Dhoot's Seventy-mm Dreams

Less than a year after Videocon Industries' Venugopal Dhoot snapped up Thomson's colour picture tube plants for more than Rs 1,200 crore, he's set his sight on South Korea's bankrupt Daewoo Electronics. The bid for the company is to open in another two to three months and Chinese giant Haier, among others, is vying for what could be a $1-billion (Rs 4,500-crore) deal, but Dhoot is unfazed. "When we bid for Thompson we were number six (in the world), no one thought we would get it," he says. Dhoot's previous two big deals (he also bought Electrolux's India facilities) were, smartly, all-stock transactions. Videocon watchers think he'll want to do an encore. That'll be a hat-trick.

Back To A Real Job

For 13 years until 2003, Rajiv Nair was Microsoft's face in India. Then, he just quit and disappeared into the corporate wilderness, where he transformed into a telecom consultant. But now Nair, Microsoft's first employee in India, has returned to the mainstream. On March 1, design software maker Autodesk announced that it was appointing the 42-year-old Nair as the regional director for the Indian sub-continent. Autodesk has been around in India for 14 years now, but with Nair's appointment, it is shifting gears. "My immediate focus is to consolidate our business in India, while simultaneously leveraging the opportunity for new business," said Nair in a release. Rivals had better not think Nair's CEO skills are rusty.

Heavy On The Bottomline

A company pays its CEO a severance package and reports lower profits. That's not news from the US, but Mumbai, India. The CEO in question: Ashwini Kakkar; the company: Thomas Cook India, which reported a 17 per cent drop in net profit for quarter ended January 31 because of the Rs 2.77 crore it has provided for in severance pay to Kakkar. "What'll happen in the future is still open." says he, now a consultant to Cook.

End Of Innings?

Three months from now, Arun Kumar Purwar will pack his bags from the State Bank Bhawan at South Mumbai's Madam Cama Road, bringing to an end one of the longest terms (42 months) of any SBI chairman in its recent history. If Lady Luck smiles on him, Purwar, a banking veteran of 30 years, may find a plump posting like his predecessor M S Verma, who got the top job at a recast TRAI in 2000. If not, there'll always be the memoirs to pen.

-Contributed by Anand Adhikari, Kushan Mitra, Krishna Gopalan,
Rahul Sachitanand, Shaleen Agrawal and Ahona Ghosh