NEW DELHI: The $5 billion Murugappa Group is caught in an uncanny situation. It has been nearly a month now that the Chennai-based conglomerate has been pulled up by the women heirs publicly for explicit gender bias in the family, but strangely there isn’t any direct communication from the Group yet.
“While they had sent out a communication to the media stating that the issue would be settled amicably soon, I am still waiting for a concrete offer from the family, given the fact that all my grievances were directly communicated to them,” Valli Arunachalam, the elder daughter of MV Murugappan, former Murugappa Group executive chairman, told The New Indian Express on Thursday.
Her communication with the family was sent last on January 6, 2020. Arunachalam, who is a US-settled nuclear scientist, has come down to India and is currently seeking legal advice and wishes to “wait patiently for a few more days” before taking the ultimate step of dragging the matter to the court.
“I am a patient person but it doesn’t mean I have infinite patience,” she rued. Demanding a seat on the board of Ambadi Investments Ltd (AIL) — the holding company of the 119-year-old Murugappa group — Valli, along with her sister and mother, have locked horns with other family members. All the three together hold 8.15 per cent stake in AIL. By law, she said they could appoint an additional director with the shareholder’s nod.
“We expected they would come back with an offer but they didn’t. Alternatively, we also suggested that if the family is willing to buy the entire stake, we could also exit from the company. But even that didn’t elicit a positive response,” Valli said, adding that they have been delaying the matter for the last two years after the demise of the group patriarch in September 2017.
Valli has also sent emails to all the male members of the family, including family patriarch MV Subbiah, who apparently represents the entire family in the issue, and other directors of AIL and a few other juniors.
In an internal letter, M M Murugappan, executive chairman of the Murugappa Group Corporate Advisory Board, has said that they will follow the principles of good corporate governance in this matter even though the family was disappointed by the way Valli had approached media, she alleged.
“So, if we were to apply good governance, as a first step, they should put me on the board because every family branch must be equally represented,” Valli said, hoping there will be action behind words soon.