TIME TO SAY TATA

Nothing seems to be going right for Cyrus Pallonji Mistry, 52, the former chairman of Tata Sons and scion of the Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) Group. On March 26 this year, the Supreme Court upheld his ouster as chairman of the Tata Group in October 2016, barely three years after he had succeeded Ratan Tata at the helm of one of India’s largest private sector conglomerates. This could mark the beginning of the end of the Mistry family’s storied association with the Tatas, an 84-year-old affair that began with Shapoorji Pallonji buying a 12.5 per cent stake in Tata Sons from the heirs of financier F.E. Dinshaw in 1936. The significance of this development is not just pecuniary; the business families were so close that Cyrus’s father, Pallonji Mistry, was once described as the ‘Phantom of Bombay House’ (the headquarters of the Tata Group) for the quiet influence he wielded over the Tata business empire.

₹ 1.78 LAKH CRORE The Mistry family’s valuation of its 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons

₹ 70,000-80,000 CRORE Tatas’ valuation of the Mistry