Harish Palaniappan's

Finance is a subject close to my heart.. because it has money $$$ in it.. but I never understood too well anything beyond a beginners level. Its probably bigger than software when it comes to terms used, coined words/phrases used, the enormous amount of branches in finance. Also the totally different context of money skills that each branch employs, could overwhelm any expert duck.. let alone a lame duck.

But still...since its close to my heart, I admire all big finance managers, especially the ones who deal with more money that they themselves have never seen piled up. Regarding this part, actually, for finance guys, money is just numbers, and its purely mathematical, it doesn't ring them a bell that anything is so much money and all. You leave a zero they will say "ha ha.. a zero is missing.. correct it", they won't say a crore is missing or a million is missing.

Dr. Manmohan singh, and P.Chidambaram, are anybody's inspiration when it comes to finance in India.. but they are not the real biggies.

While there are many biggies, out there managing and growing the financial strength of some huge india companies, sometimes just growing the business multi-fold by helping company managers invest properly, other times they get a sick company's act together sell off sick areas of its business, feed that to recoverable areas of business and make the company rise up and shine. And actually, this is what any finance-manager-to-the-heart guy would dream of doing.

Meleveetil Damodaran is one such person. If you see his profile, you will be astonished about what he has done. He has minted money for other people wherever he went.. and he does it with a chubby charm we should say.

He is currently the chief of SEBI (stock exchanges and regulatory board of india), and you already know how much atonishing a rise indian stock markets have seen in the past couple of years. We don't want to think it is all because of this man, obviously all companies and india itself is growing up in attitude and economy. But, without a proper regulator, or proper policing what happens to enormous growth is everybody's easy guess. SEBI streamlines the markets with its policies and regulations correcting them often.. in the interest of sustaining the growth in the markets, in turn in the industries, in turn pushing it further into what makes the number the country earns.

Before SEBI, he was a celebrated cheif of IDBI.. actually an industrial development bank.. IDBI standing for Industrial development bank of india, the bank only handled industrial customers, and was considerably sick or not-interesting business when Damodaran took over. He brought in more money to fund the bank's growth by doing many things, of which one was the bringing of the bank to retail customers by opening up its products. That is how, an industrial development bank oddly serves retail customers even today.

Before IDBI, he was UTI chief.. unit trust of india, the mutual fund compay or asset management company, however you call it, is still one of the biggest mutual fund players in the country.

And if you didn't realize yet, all these are government companies.. though they actually have grown so big and make much more money than many well-organized and funded private organizations.

Damodaran is an IAS officer.. Indian administrative service.. and actually not a full-blown financial expert until his first few jobs put him on task to restructure a few sick public sector banks. He has later worked with the Reserve bank of india, and even with the Ministry of Finance of India for five years.

Thanks to his profile, he is very popularly considered the turnaround-er man for indian government's financial priorities.

I remember there were some consideration to appoint him as the finance minister or at a higher level in the finance mnistry when Dr.Manmohan sign's government was formed.. and it ended up like P.chidambaram takes care of finance but will require a manager, strong and extra-ordinaire for managing the big bull SEBI which is a government controlled body...and the obvious fit was Damodaran.

SEBI obviously is the top priority financial body, which the government should control well, to reap financial benefits not only for the people but for government to run economically stronger too. SEBI's success with pulling the stock markets higher and sustaining it higher will directly reflect on indian economy. .All these calculations worked true and people are reaping benefits everywhere.

Ok. all that is fine.. but why did I suddenly jump on Damodaran.

NDTV profit, the financial new channel showed a live video conference of Mr.Damodaran and his SEBI collegues answer questions of Foreign investors regarding some recent policy announcements by SEBI.

Damodaran was answering all questions like a breeze, with no big-shot-iness, and no air of doubts. Mind you.. financial questions can be difficult.. at such a high-level because they need to understand not only GDP, inflation, economy index, etc., but also about fund flows in-to or out-of the country and how a policy decision will or will not affect any of those 1001 parameters.

I didn't understand any bit of the interviews questions or the answers.. but was just admiring this man and his open strength in front of foreign investors who are at the other end putting millions of dollars in india and asking questions on it.

In my employment with companies, I have only come across a couple of indian managers who showed any bold face with clients. Most indian managers are like 'do-whatever-client-says' or 'client-is-king' types.. they keep nodding.

Another admirable finance manager on my fav list.. (who also happens to be chubby charmer) is K.V.Kamath, the CEO of ICICI