MUMBAI: The passing away of Ratan Naval Tata, the Tata Group patriarch and the chairman emeritus on Wednesday night after a short illness, has triggered speculation over who heads the 13 Tata Trusts, which owns 66.4% the $165-billion Tata conglomerate.
86-year-old Ratan Tata has left for heavenly abode apparently without a succession planning in place for the 13 trusts, shifting the focus to Noel Tata, stepbrother of the late Tata. Noel, who many consider the heir apparent of the Tata Group, is a trustee in two of the most influential of trusts -- the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. The two trusts own 55% of Tata Sons, the holding company of the diversified salt-to-software Tata Group.
In recent years, Noel has taken on increasingly important responsibilities within the Trusts. In February 2019, he was inducted onto the board of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. He was also made the vice-chairman of Titan Company in 2018, and in March 2022, he was appointed vice-chairman of Tata Steel, further solidifying his presence within the group.
Noel’s career within the Tata Group began in the early 2000s, and by 2011, he was appointed managing director of Tata International, and for over a decade now he has chaired Trent, the group’s retail chain, that runs Croma, Westside, Zudio, Star Bazaar among others, excluding the Tata Starbucks and Titan and Tanishq.
While Tata Trusts spokesman did not answer the call from TNIE, a former trustee who worked closely with the late Tata said, Noel has everything going to lead the trusts as the chairman. “For one he is from the Tata family which carries a lot of trust and faith, and two, he has long years of experience in working with the trusts and third, Tata Sons also has to look at the Parsi community’s sentiment for the Tata name. All these, I believe have him leading the trust soon. Plus we don’t know whether the late Tata left a note before he breathed his last about the future of the trusts,” the source said.
Unlike Tata Sons, where during his working life itself the late Tata could find a durable successor, first in Cyrus Mistry, a fellow Parsi and the single largest external shareholder of Tata Sons (which though didn’t work out the way planned) and then in his right-hand man N Chandrasekaran, the late Tata could not ensure a succession plan for the trusts before he breathed his last night in a city hospital.
The significance of Tata Trusts is humungous as it owns 66.4% of the $165-billion Tata empire that counts more than 100 operating companies in as many sectors, and 30 of them listed with collective market value of over Rs 34 trillion!
At the time of his passing, Tata was the chairman of both the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust—the two of the most influential six trusts under the Tata Trusts umbrella that own as much as 55% of Tata Sons. Going by the constitution of these trusts, the 13 trustees have to choose a new chairman from among themselves to head the largest trusts.
Of the 13 trustees, six of them manage the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and seven manage the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. Of the 13, five are common in both the most influential ones and Noel Tata is a trustee in both these largest trusts.
The six trustees of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust are Noel Naval Tata, the 67-year-old stepbrother (from the late Tata’s father’s second marriage and who is now the chairman of the Tata Group’s retail venture Trent), the former defence secretary in the UPA government Vijay Singh, Venu Srinivasan of the TVS group, Mehli Mistry, a businessman and a director in companies of the Pallonji Group, the noted corporate lawyer Darius Khambata and Pramjit Jhaveri, who headed Citigroup in India.
The trustees of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust are Jimmy Tata, the late Tata’s younger from his own mother, who lives completely out of the limelight in a 2BHK apartment in south Mumbai, Jehangir HC Jehangir, who is the chairman of the Jehangir Hospital in the city.
The common trustees are Noel, Singh, Srinivasan, Mistry and Khambata with Singh and Srinivasan being the vice-chairmen.
