Mumbai, Aug. 14: Tata Motors today announced the appointment of P. B. Balaji as its group chief financial officer (CFO) with effect from November.

Balaji, who was the executive director (finance & IT) and chief financial officer of Hindustan Unilever Ltd, will replace C. Ramakrishnan at Tata Motors.

Tata Motors said the appointment of Balaji was aimed to drive financial performance and bring greater rigour to operations and investment decisions across different entities.

Ramakrishnan will retire in September. He was elevated as the Tata Motors group CFO in July 2015.

A global finance professional, Balaji worked in a number of roles in the Unilever group over a period of 20 years.

He was the vice-president (finance) for Unilever America, supply chain, based in Switzerland. Before that, he was the group chief accountant of Unilever worldwide in London.

Before moving to London, Balaji had served as the vice-president (finance) for the home and personal care business in India and earlier as the vice-president (treasury) for the AAR region in Singapore.

Balaji was also a member of the stakeholders' relationship committee, the corporate social responsibility committee and the risk management committee of the FMCG giant.

"Balaji's deep knowledge in all areas across finance and his global experience will be very valuable for Tata Motors. He will be a great addition to the management team," Tata Motors chairman N. Chandrasekaran said.

Tata Motors chief executive officer and managing director Guenter Butschek said Balaji would play a very important role in the company's transformation.

The appointment will help the company's renewed focus on topline, market share growth, cost reduction initiatives and efficiency improvements to deliver better financial performance and profitability in the future, he added.

Balaji is a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, and has a post-graduate management degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

His appointment comes days after the homegrown auto company reported a 42 per cent growth in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended June 30 at Rs 3,182.26 crore compared with Rs 2,236.38 crore in the corresponding period last year.

During the quarter, the company posted consolidated revenues (net of excise) of Rs 58,651 crore as compared to Rs 65,115 crore for the same quarter last year. However, the margins at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) had disappointed the markets.