Top management executives exit continues at Hindustan Motors

According to industry sources, Singh put in his papers on August 13 as a series of top executives are leaving the firm, unhappy with the functioning and poor financial condition of the organisation. He joins the likes of Assistant General Manager (North Zone) Romesh Lalwani, who quit in July and Executive Vice President Moloy Chowdhury, who resigned in June.

Earlier in May, the company's Managing Director R Santhanam had also resigned and Manoj Jha had replaced him for a period of five years. Singh could not be contacted to for comments, but a HM spokesperson described the situation as a normal industry movement.

"With the change in top management, and even otherwise, in the automotive industry, such moves keep happening and are not unusual," the spokesperson said. The sources, however, said salaries are being delayed in HM, which in May said it would approach the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) due to eroding networth.

Besides, advance money collected from dealers are being utilised for other purposes, thereby resulting in delay of up to three months in delivery of vehicles to them, the sources said. This, however, is refuted by the spokesperson. "The demand for our vehicles is increasing. Under such fluctuating market conditions, the volume ramp up takes some time and delivery could get slightly delayed.

"Further there are some orders for non-standard vehicles, which we produce only on order and it takes some time to fulfil these." The company, which counts sales of partner Mitsubishi's products with its own Ambassador together, sold 845 units in July as against 663 in the same month last year. For the ongoing fiscal, its sales stood at 2,966 units compared to 2,372 units in the year-ago period.

In May, Hindustan Motors had announced to approach the BIFR as its accumulated losses at the end of financial year March 31, 2010, resulted in erosion of over 50 per cent of its peak net worth during the preceding four financial years. For the fiscal 2009-10, HM's net loss was at Rs 42.85 crore, with net sales of Rs 576.90 crore.