Born in 1963, Chitra Ramakrishna is the former CEO of National Stock Exchange, an institution founded in 1992. She is one of the few women who have held major positions in the field of stock exchanges around the world. Fortune magazine described Chitra Ramakrishna as the world's number 17 most powerful woman.

Chitra Ramakrishna holds a degree from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK, and is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). Chitra Ramakrishna started her career with IDBI in 1983. In 1992, she was one of the five people selected by SS Nadkarni, the then chairman of IDBI, to set up a fully professionally run transparent and state-of-the-art stock exchange. This was the year when the infamous Harshad Mehta scam came to the fore in the Bombay Stock Exchange. Here she spent 12 years working under Ravi Narayan, who took over from Nadkarni, learning every detail of the stock exchange. Narayan later became the Vice President of NSE and Chitra had a good relationship with him as a mentor and friend. Chitra was made the Joint Managing Director of NSE in September 2009 and more than two decades after joining this exchange, the day also came on 1st April 2013 when Chitra was given the reins of NSE as Managing Director and CEO.   CBI Issues Lookout Circular for Former NSE CEO Chitra Ramakrishna, 2 Others

Chitra Ramakrishna was only the third woman to head a stock exchange in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to her, women had access to top positions on the Colombo Stock Exchange of Sri Lanka and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China. In view of her rapidly emerging identity and ability, she was also appointed chairman of the board of the World Federation of Exchanges. Under the leadership of Chitra Ramakrishna, the daily average turnover of the NSE had doubled to Rs 3.5 trillion by 2016. When she took over as the boss three and a half years ago, it was 1.6 trillion rupees. NSE posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,026 crore in FY16.

When Chitra stepped down in FY16, she was the second highest paid executive in the financial services sector. Chitra's salary that year was second only to Aditya Puri, the then MD of HDFC Bank (whose take home salary was Rs 9.7 crore). She used to draw almost three times more than the then BSE CEO Ashishkumar Chauhan's salary of Rs 3.3 crore.

 Besides playing a key role at NSE, she also held senior positions in other companies promoted by the exchange such as NSEIT and she was a part of the committee on financial sector reforms headed by Raghuram Rajan in 2008. She was also closely involved with the team that put in place a framework to set up the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

Controversy

Ramkrishna was ousted from NSE in 2016 for her role in the co-location and algo trading scam and abuse of power.

 In February 2022, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) charged Chitra Ramkrishna and other NSE officials for alleged governance lapses and for violating securities contract rules in the hiring at the senior levels and appointment of Anand Subramanian as the chief strategic advisor and his re-designation as group operating officer and advisor to MD.  Income Tax Officials Raid Former NSE Chief Chitra Ramkrishna’s Premises For Tax Evasion

SEBI said that the CEO of the country's largest stock exchange with a capital of about 308 crores, during her tenure, used to seek advice from a Yogi over email. SEBI wrote about this unknown yogi 338 times in the report. After reading this report, discussions have started about whether such a big stock market was going on at the behest of an unknown yogi. Believe it or not, the same is mentioned in the investigation of market regulator SEBI.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 18, 2022 08:12 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).