The six-member board of Tata Sons, under the chairmanship of Natarajan Chandrasekaran, was held at the Bombay House on Friday, which did not have any of the key issues such as its listing or a third term for the chairman on the agenda, except clearing the annual accounts and dividends.
“This was a regular board meeting, attended by all the six members. The board did not discuss any of the issues which the media was speculating on. The meeting approved the annual accounts of the group, along with the dividends,” a person aware of the developments told TNIE.
“The four-hour-long meeting did not discuss any of the key issues including a third-term for Chandra, or the fraught issue of listing Tata Sons and the mounting losses at some of the key unlisted companies like Air India, Tata Digital, which are under the direct control of Chandra,” another source said.
These companies late last month made a three-year turnaround plans to the trusts, which had whetted the presentation at the June 8 meeting.
Under its articles of association, the holding company of the $265 billion Tata Group can have a maximum of nine board members, of which three are nominees of the Tata Trusts, which own 66.4% in Tata Sons. The current board comprises chariman Chandrasekaran, vice-chairman Noel Naval Tata, Venu Srinivasan from the trusts, Saurabh Agrawal (executive director group CFO) and independent directors Harish Manwani and Anita George.
After the near-breakdown of communications between Tata Trusts and Tata Sons since the February 24 board meeting held to recommend a third term to Chandra but failed to do so after trusts led by Noel Tata raised concerns about the mounting losses at Air India and the new-age businesses.
While Air India reported a Rs26,000 crore loss in FY26, up from Rs10,859 crore in FY25, other heavily loss making new-age ventures include Tata Digital, had losses of over Rs10,905 crore in FY25, sharply higher than Rs1,557 crore in FY20. Tata Electronics is also bleeding. Together these unlisted entities are likely to book close to Rs 30,000 crore losses.
Tata Digital houses the group’s digital commerce ambitions including Tata Neu, BigBasket, Tata 1mg, Croma, and Tata Cliq) had reported Rs 4,610 crore loss in FY25, driven primarily by BigBasket and Croma.
Tata Electronics is the unlisted semiconductor and manufacturing business is also heavily capital-intensive, operating at a projected loss of around Rs 3,000 crore as it sets up massive facilities. The numbers for none of these companies are published yet.
Noel is worried about the mounting losses, the sources said, as this would affect the cash flow of the trusts which in turn will impact their charity work running into 1000s of crores annually.
While the higher losses of Air India has more to do with the June 12 crash and the closure of airspace by Pakistan since last May, other consumer facing businesses are all Chandra’s ventures and deeply in the red.
