S. N. Subrahmanyan

Chairman & Managing Director

S N Subrahmanyan is the Chairman & Managing Director of Larsen & Toubro and serves on the board of directors of this multi billion dollar conglomerate. 

SNS, as he is popularly known, is also Vice Chairman on the boards of LTIMindtree and L&T Technology Services, Chairman of L&T Metro Rail (Hyderabad) Limited, and Director and Chairperson of L&T Finance Holdings Ltd. 

Prior to taking over the reins as CEO & MD in July 2017, SNS in his capacity as Deputy MD & President led L&T’s infrastructure business to its position as the country’s largest construction organization and amongst the biggest in the world. He is now responsible for leading the breadth and width of L&T’s considerable business interests to new growth levels, riding on the enormous benefits of digitalisation, big data, and predictive analysis that he drives internally with exceptional zeal. He places a premium on innovation, project management and talent development, particularly in leadership roles. 

Hailing from Chennai, India, SNS commenced his professional journey with L&T in 1984 as a project planning engineer armed with a degree in civil engineering and a post-graduation in business management. Mentored by stalwarts, he took on roles of increasing responsibility across business verticals. With an entrepreneurial mindset, drive, and foresight, he began to rewrite the rules of the game. He led L&T’s foray into the realm of executing developmental projects starting with the extremely successful HITEC City project in Hyderabad and the Bangalore International Airport, forging deals in the process without precedent in the construction space. Successfully setting up the Ready Mix business in India for the first time, bagging mandates to design & build all major international airports in India, venturing into untapped geographies like the Middle East, Africa & ASEAN to establish L&T’s credentials and presence and building long-term relationships came easy to him. 

Under his leadership, SNS has transformed L&T into a company that executes a wide range of projects at Speed & Scale and, in the process, builds the tallest, largest, longest, smartest, and most complex, including the iconic Bullet Train project, India’s first. 

L&T is among the three Indian companies to feature in the top 46 Most Honoured Companies according to the New York-based B2B publication, Institutional Investor, was recognised as the Company of the Year by business publication, Business Standard in 2020 and has featured on the Forbes list as one of the world’s best employers. 

SNS was ranked 8^th in the Construction Week Power 100 Ranking for 2022, that had previously recognised him as the Infrastructure Person of the Year for 2012.  In 2020, SNS was ranked as the Top CEO (Sell Side) and the 3^rd Best CEO (Overall) in the All-Asia Executive Team Survey conducted by Institutional Investor and recognised as the CEO of the Year by the leading Indian news channel, CNBC-Awaaz. He has been conferred the Emergent CEO Award at the CEO Awards in 2019 for his exemplary leadership and for delivering seamless growth for L&T. He has also been accorded the Leading Engineering Personality award by the Institution of Engineers (India) in 2014. In March 2022, he was recognised as the winner in the Infrastructure & Engineering category of the Business Today-PwC India’s Best CEOs ranking. 

SNS holds positions of pre-eminence on various industry bodies, construction institutions and councils. In February 2021, he was appointed Chairman of the National Safety Council (NSC) for three years by the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment. In this role SNS will guide the NSC, which has a major part to play to ensure safety in workplaces under the new Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSH Code, 2020).  

Recognising L&T’s leadership in climate and infrastructure finance, SNS has been appointed one of nine founding members of Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI) India to bring global scale and influence to the initiative.