Sajjan Jindal’s loss could be Kumar Mangalam Birla’s gain

Tuhin Mukherjee , the man widely credited for JSW Steel’s recent mine acquisitions overseas , has quit the company to join the Birlas’ unlisted mining arm,EsselMining.Mukherjee will replace Ravi Kastia, who has spear headed Essel Mining for the past five years . JSW Steel. confirmed Mr Mukherjee's exit and said he was moving for what it described as ‘better prospects’ . Confirming Mr Mukherjee's appointment , an Aditya Birla group spkeswoman said that current Essel Mining managing director Ravi Kastia, will look after other businesses such as trading, thermal and wind power projects and ports. Mr Kastia will also oversee a fero-chem — which is a raw material used in the chemical industry — factory at Vapi and the textile unit at the Phillippines. Mr Mukherjee led the Jindal group's efforts to match its growing steelmaking and power generating capacities with captive resources and the Mumbai-based group's recent acquisition of mines in the US, Canada, South Africa and Mozambique could be attributed to his team. In April 2010, JSW acquired a majority stake in South African Coal Mining Holdings for about Rs 51.16 crore and followed that a month later, by buying coking coal assets in West Virginia for about Rs 450 crore. In October, the JSW group bought a controlling stake in Canada's CIC Energy, a coal miner, for about Rs 1,886 crore to feed its power generating arm, JSW Energy. "Mukherjee brought aggression to most of JSW's forays. He was known for thorough due diligence," said a senior executive from a rival metals company who had competed with the JSW group in some of the recent acquisitions. In the negotiations to acquire the South African coal company, the JSW group raised its price and offered to build mining infrastructure, which eventually clinched the deal. JSW's resources team has also completed the acquisition of Chile's iron ore project — the Santa Fe Mining project — where JSW invested about $400 million. The project had been put on the backburnerduringtheeconomiccrisisof 2008and was restarted early this year. The Chile project will make 6 million tonnes of ore annually. Apart from Essel Mining, Mukherjee will also head the group's mineral resources development unit which looks at backward integration of various manufacturing operations within the conglomerate.