For most of its history, Vedanta ran on a simple formula: borrow against one business to fund the next one, and let Anil Agarwal decide which bet came next. On 24 and 25 June 2026, that formula ended. Four new companies listed on Indian exchanges in two days, and the CEO seat that used to sit above all of them, vacant since 2023, finally got filled again.
Arun Misra, who had been running Hindustan Zinc, became Vedanta Group CEO on 1 August 2026, for an initial one-year term.
Splitting a company built on debt
The demerger listed Vedanta Aluminium, Vedanta Oil & Gas, Vedanta Iron & Steel and Vedanta Power as separate, independently traded companies, alongside the original Vedanta entity. It is one of the largest corporate demergers in Indian history, and it is a direct answer to a specific, well-documented criticism of how Agarwal has run the group: one governance-advisory analysis found Vedanta spent more than ₹6 on acquisitions, dividends and capital expenditure for every ₹1 it raised in fresh equity, a ratio that only works as long as lenders and rating agencies stay comfortable with the group’s overall debt picture.
Splitting the conglomerate into five focused, market-facing businesses is meant to fix that by giving each business its own balance sheet, its own capital allocation discipline, and its own investor base that can value it on its own numbers instead of on Vedanta’s group-wide leverage.
Investors are not sold yet
Agarwal’s own framing at the listing ceremony was expansive: “Today, these businesses begin a new chapter as independent companies with dedicated management teams, focused capital allocation frameworks and ambitious growth plans,” he said, projecting eventual valuations reaching $100 billion combined. The market’s actual response was more cautious than the ceremony: all four new listings fell on their debut day, the opposite of the vote of confidence a demerger is supposed to produce.
That gap, between the story Agarwal is telling and the price the market is willing to pay for it, is now Misra’s problem to close, not just Agarwal’s.
What Misra actually inherits
Misra’s own record is the case for why he got the seat: under him, Hindustan Zinc has been one of the more consistently well-run pieces of the Vedanta empire, a business that behaved like it had its own balance sheet even while it was part of a larger structure that did not always act that way. Putting him in charge of the newly split group is a bet that the discipline he ran at one subsidiary can now be exported across four newly independent ones, each with its own board, its own debt and its own reason to disagree with the centre.
A one-year term is a short runway to prove that. It reads less like a long-term mandate and more like a trial: get the five-way split to actually behave like five focused companies rather than one conglomerate wearing five name tags, and the market that sold off on debut day might start believing the ₹100 billion story Agarwal told at the ceremony.
Sources
- NDTV Profit, on the board approving Arun Misra as chief executive for a one-year term
- The Economic Times, on the appointment alongside the June-quarter profit
- NDTV Profit, on Misra’s record and the appointment landing days after the demerger
- BW People, on the re-appointment as executive director and the one-year CEO term, 1 August 2026
