Sommer: New role

Mumbai, Sept. 5: Ron Sommer, former chairman of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom, is joining the board of Tata Consultancy Services as an additional independent director.

The board of directors of the $2.97-billion global IT services and consulting giant today cleared the appointment.

Sommer was chairman of Deutsche Telekom from 1995 to 2002. He brings extensive global experience in telecom and other sectors to the TCS board. He has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Vienna.

Sommer holds important positions on several global companies, including Munich Re, where he is a member on the supervisory board.

He is also chairman of the advisory board and director at AFK Systema (Russia); member of the international advisory board at Blackstone Group (US); a member of the supervisory board at Celanese AG (Germany); and director, Motorola (US).

Sommer's addition to the board of directors at TCS increases the number of independent directors to five, including Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, former HSBC chief Aman Mehta, former senior adviser to the Prime Minister and Indian Ambassador to the US Naresh Chandra, and head of GlaxoSmithKline (Asia) S. Thiagarajan.

The two executive directors of the company are chairman Ratan Tata and CEO and managing director S. Ramadorai.