March 22 (Reuters) - Vodafone Group Plc's Indianunit and Idea Cellular, which are in the process ofmerging their operations to create the country's biggesttelecoms carrier, on Thursday named Vodafone veteran BaleshSharma as the new chief executive for the combined venture https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/6d618f11-7190-4e5f-aa06-39daccc6c706.pdf.
Sharma is currently the chief operating officer at VodafoneIndia.
Akshaya Moondra, the current chief financial officer atIdea, will become the finance chief at the combined firm, thecompanies said separate filings.
Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Idea's parent Aditya Birlaconglomerate, will be the non-executive chairman of the mergedtelecoms company.
Vodafone Group and Idea had agreed to merge their Indianoperations in March last year, potentially creating thecountry's biggest telecoms business after the entry of a newrival, Reliance Jio Infocomm, sparked a brutal price war.
The companies, which have said they expect the merger to becompleted in the first half of this year, said they are making"good progress" in securing regulatory approvals for the merger.(Reporting by Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing bySubhranshu Sahu)
Vodafone (VOD)
