About

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C V Raghu was the group general counsel of Motherson Group. and drove its legal, secretarial, regulatory, compliance and governance processes across the globe. While he has demitted office to pursue his profession and other passions in life, he continues to support the group as a group legal advisor in a non-exclusive, consultative, and advisory capacity. Apart from Motherson Group, he provides advisory services to various other companies and serves as independent director on the board of various companies.

Motherson Group is one of the world’s fastest growing automotive component makers and is one of the world’s most admired automotive brands. The Group supplies specialised auto parts to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) across 42 countries through over 240 legal entities and over 350 units. The Group continues to grow very fast and sustainably through its wide-ranging business portfolio, with support from its 30 joint venture partners and has an aspiration to grow to $36bn at a ROCE of 40%.  

During his tenure at Motherson, C V was extensively associated in its growth, strategy and led all its acquisitions (which included acquiring listed entities, large operating entities spanning across multiple jurisdictions); fund raising (from ordinary debt to structured debts, issuance of commercial papers to issuance of global bonds listed in international stock exchanges); restructuring (from listed entities to collapsing special purpose vehicles in India and abroad); and large transactions across the globe. 

He has worked closely with practically all international and domestic law firms, regulators, anti-trust, and competition law authorities, and has been the chief representative and negotiator from a legal perspective on all its initiatives. He has set up robust governance standards, processes, and technology platforms to ensure the highest and “best in class” processes, policies, practices, transparent disclosure norms in are in place, keeping in view the global and local legal requirements to ensure smooth flow of information across the group, and control mechanisms are strictly followed to ensure risk mitigation and management across the Group. He has worked extensively on “make in India” initiative which has enabled establishment of new verticals and enabled existing verticals to seek benefits of the “production linked incentive” schemes available in India and overseas.   

C V has rich and varied experience spanning over three decades in the legal domain, that encompasses a diverse set of industries including large business conglomerates like the Max Group, American Express, Hindustan Unilever. He has served on several boards and committees since 1998 and has also been on the advisory board of various institutions. He has been a strong advocate of corporate governance practices that ensure businesses imbibe corporate governance in their culture and focus on creating wealth legally and ethically.  

He was a member of the working committee of insurance regulatory and development authority of India for harmonising corporate governance guidelines for the insurance sector and on cii task force on dispute resolution. He has extensively represented his views on various legislations and regulations with various central banks, federal governments, credit bureaus directly and through various industry bodies and institutions.  

C V Raghu is the president and founding member of the General Counsel’s Association of India (“GCAI”). He has been advocating the cause of statutory recognition of the role of general counsel and aims to work towards achieving this objective.