Another top executive and long-time Wipro employee, Sudip Banerjee, has quit Premji Investments to join L&T’s IT subsidiary, L&T Infotech, as CEO. Banerjee replaces V Magapu, a director on the L&T board who was holding additional responsibility of L&T Infotech CEO.

“We have been looking for a CEO for a long time now. We wanted someone from the IT industry. Wipro is one of the few companies culturally similar to L&T,” Magapu told ET. Banerjee will report to Magapu and operate both from Bangalore (where is he currently based) and Mumbai, where L&T Infotech is headquartered.

The appointment of Banerjee, gives a fillip to L&T Infotech’s IPO plans which have been postponed multiple times because of bad market conditions and because of revenue and profitability targets it wants to achieve before going public.

“The running team is ready. We are only waiting for the sun to come out of the clouds now,” Magapu said, referring to the current bear market situation. “My guess is the market will take till late next year to improve. But we’re not under any pressure to go public,” he added.

Banerjee was heading the enterprise solutions division of Wipro Technologies before he moved to Premji Investments, Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s private investment arm, following a reorganisation in May this year. Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe were promoted as joint CEOs of Wipro after the re-organisation and Banerjee was made a director on the advisory board of Premji Investments.

Banerjee has been with the Wipro Group since 1983, and his exit is the second of a senior Wipro executive, post-reorganisation. Earlier, P R Chandrasekar, president (North America and Europe), had quit after about eight years in Wipro. L&T Infotech is a wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T, with about 11,000 employees. Despite the strong backing, however, its performance has lagged that of some of its peers.

One of the reasons for this could be its stronger manufacturing focus relative to its exposure to financial services, which is the largest consumer of IT services. The firm expects to close the current financial year ending March 2009 at $500 million in revenues, Magapu said.