FM to lead Indian CEOs at US meet

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will lead a high-level business delegation, including Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, to the US next week, where he will also have a bilateral meeting with his American counterpart.

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and Planning Commission Deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will also participate in the India-US Business CEOs Forum Meeting to be held on June 22 (Tuesday) in Washington.

"During his stay the finance minister will also have bilateral meeting with his US counterpart," an official statement said on Friday.

The 12-member Indian CEOs delegation includes Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata, who is also the CEO Forum co-chair, besides Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, Infosys Technologies CEO & MD S Gopalakrishnan, Bharti Enterprises chairman & Group CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal, ICICI Bank MD & CEO Chanda Kochhar and HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, among others.

The US side will be represented by Honeywell chairman David Cote (who is also co-chair of the CEO Forum), United Technologies Corp chairman Louis Chenevert, JP Morgan Chase & Co chairman Jamie Dimon, McGraw Hill Companies CEO Terry McGraw, PepsiCo chairman Indra Nooyi and Citigroup CEO VikramcPandit, among others.

The US-India CEO Forum was first constituted in 2005 and was reconstituted in 2009 during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington last November.

This will be the second meeting of the reconstituted India-US Business CEOs Forum, the statement said.