Palanivel Thiagarajan (PTR) is an Indian politician and the current Finance Minister of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

. He was elected to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election in 2016 and

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

from Madurai Central.

Early life

He is the son of the late P. T. R. Palanivel Rajan, who was also a well-known politician in Tamil Nadu. His grandfather, P. T. Rajan, was the Chief Minister of Madras Presidency from 4 April 1936, to 24 August 1936. Following his schooling at The

Lawrence School, Lovedale The Lawrence School, Lovedale (formerly known as Lawrence Memorial Royal Military School), the namesake of its founder Brigadier-General Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence KCB, is a co-educational boarding school located at Lovedale, which is a li ...

, and Vikaasa School, Madurai, Thiagarajan, he graduated with a degree in

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

from the

National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli (NIT Tiruchirappalli or NIT Trichy) is a public technical and research university near the city of Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded as Regional Engineering College Tiruchirapp ...

(formerly, Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirappalli). He obtained a master's degree in

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in human factors engineering/engineering psychology at

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 18 ...

. He then completed his

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

in financial management at

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

. He is a patent holder of Methods & systems for providing structured loan commitment transactions.

Corporate career

He began his career in 1990 as an independent consultant in Operations and Systems Improvement. In 2001 he joined

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, a ...

as Trader and Co-Portfolio Manager – Firm Relationship Loan Portfolio. He quit Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as Head Of Offshore Capital Markets in the year 2008. He then worked for Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore in the Global Capital Markets division. He quit Standard Chartered Bank as Managing Director, Financial Markets Sales in 2014.

Political career

Thiagarajan was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Madurai Central Assembly constituency in the

2016 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election The Fifteenth Legislative Assembly Election was held on 16 May 2016 for the 232 seats (except Thanjavur and Aravakurichi for which held on 26 October 2016) of the Legislative Assembly in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. AIADMK under J. Jayal ...

. He was re-elected in the

2021 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election The Sixteenth Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Election was held on 6 April 2021, to elect representatives from the 234 constituencies in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) won the election, ending the decade-l ...

He is the Finance and Human Resources Management Minister of Tamil Nadu since May 2021. He has released a White Paper on Tamil Nadu's finances after a long time.

Electoral performance

Personal life

He married Margaret, whom he met at

where he pursued his Ph.D. while pursuing her master's. They have two sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thiagarajan, Palanivel 1966 births Living people Tamil Nadu MLAs 2016–2021 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli alumni University at Buffalo alumni MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Indian investment bankers Tamil Nadu MLAs 2021–2026