The current disquiet in the $180-billion Tata Group is more than a boardroom battle for control and strategy.
According to two individuals from the inner circle of Tata and the two Mistry families involved, it is mainly a change in sentiment among the actors involved that has caused a stir in the boardrooms.
“What appears to be a boardroom power struggle is essentially a shift in old familial relationships that have undergone emotional tumult in the past, and are going through a reorganization of interests for a cause that is being dictated by community interest, and not any business philosophy,” said one of the individuals who is part of the inner circle of the Parsi families involved.
It is learnt that all the Parsis in the board of trustees at Tata Trusts have banded together in favour of the Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) Group.
This jointness has, reportedly, been brought about by the senior women in the two Mistry families, the SP Group and the Meher Pallonji (MP) Group. “There is no minister involved in this part of the drama,” said one of persons quoted above. “These women have reached out to Noel Tata, too, to help the SP group that is still recovering from the untimely death of Cyrus Mistry besides the financial stress it is struggling with,” said one of the two individuals.
The two families with a common patriarch three generations ago were estranged with each other over the years and their relationship worsened when Cyrus Mistry, who was named Tata Son chairman in 2012, objected to a few large-scale contracts given to the MP Group on financial terms that he found to be exorbitant.
In 2016, Mehli Mistry from the MP Group sided with Ratan Tata in his efforts to oust Cyrus Mistry from Tata Sons. The relationship between the two families was further strained after this episode. This, however, seems to have changed now.
Tata Trusts has seven trustees that include chairman Noel Tata, vice-chairman Venu Srinivasan, Mehli Mistry, Darius Khambata, Pramit Jhaveri, Jehangir HC Jehangir and Vijay Singh, whose proposed reappointment on the board of Tata Sons led to a confrontation that was sought to be resolved through the intervention of Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Tata Trusts is the largest stakeholder in Tata Sons with 66% stake followed by the SP Group with 18.4% stake. The umbrella arm of the Tata Group has 30 listed firms, with businesses ranging from salt to software and auto to defence, operating under it.
At the core of the current conflict is the listing of Tata Sons. SP Group has been pushing for the holding company to go public in order to liquidate its massive assets that remain locked and inaccessible to the group.
The group has run up a huge pile of debt amounting to around $1.2 billion, and is in dire need of funds. In a statement issued on October 10, the group said, the public listing of Tata Sons is not merely a financial move but “a moral and social imperative”.
“We firmly believe that listing this premier institution will not only uphold the spirit of transparency envisioned by its founding father, Shri Jamsetji Tata, but also strengthen trust among all stakeholders — employees, investors, and the people of India,” the statement said.
But beyond emotion, the friction had a clock ticking in the background.
Incidentally, the Reserve Bank of India had mandated a public listing of Tata Sons by September 30 as per the scale-based regulatory framework it introduced in 2002. This framework classified non-banking financial companies into four layers based on a few parameters. Given its large-scale investments in group companies and sizeable borrowings, Tata Sons was placed in the upper layer of the RBI classification.
Tata Group, however, was not in favour of a listing. Incidentally, it was Tata Trusts that had taken the lead in directing Tata Sons chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran to explore options to keep the listing at bay.
At present, however, a majority of trustees are said to be in favour of listing Tata Sons in order to help the SP Group out.
The Parsis banding together in the Trust has, however, put Noel Tata in a difficult spot. “On one hand, the Parsi group is expecting Noel to stand in unison with them and on the other, the professionals in the group are demanding that he upholds the Tata interest,” said one of the persons quoted above. This partly explains the tiff between Noel Tata and Mehli Mistry-led group.
