Mumbai (AFP) – India salt-to-steel conglomerate Tata Sons appointed a new chairman of the board on Thursday, the company said in a statement, following an acrimonious management dispute with its former chief.
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who currently heads software giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will take charge from February 21 — replacing former chairman Cyrus Mistry who was ousted in October from Tata Sons, the holding company of the sprawling $103 billion Tata Group.
“The Board of Directors of Tata Sons, at its meeting today, appointed Mr. N. Chandrasekaran as Executive Chairman,” the company said in a statement.
Popularly known as Chandra, the 53-year-old Tata lifer, joined the company in 1987 and has been chief executive of the software services company since 2009.
He said in a separate statement that he felt privileged “to lead this trusted institution that has a rich heritage”.
“At the Tata group, we are at an inflection point. I am aware that this role comes with huge responsibilities,” added Chandrasekaran, who was appointed to Tata Sons’ board in October.
He announced that Rajesh Gopinathan, the current chief financial officer of TCS, would succeed him as head of the IT firm.
Chandrasekaran also serves on the board of India’s central bank which describes him as “an avid photographer, music aficionado and a passionate long-distance runner” on its website.
Thursday’s appointment is the latest in an ongoing tussle between former chairman Mistry and Ratan Tata, patriarch of one of India’s most influential business families.
Mistry held the post of chairman for nearly four years until he was sacked. He resigned from all group firms in December but hung on to his seat as a director of the board of Tata Sons.
The increasingly bitter battle saw a fresh twist last week with Tata’s call for a shareholders’ meeting next month to remove Mistry as a director of the board of Tata Sons, his last remaining foothold within the group.
Mistry’s dismissal as chairman shocked India’s business community and saw Ratan Tata take interim charge of the sprawling conglomerate, a post which the patriarch had held for more than two decades.
The 150-year-old Mumbai-based conglomerate, which was founded under British colonial rule, has long been a source of pride for India.
But the feud is threatening its reputation and has helped wipe around $9 billion off the collective stock market value of the group’s eight main companies.
The Tata Group is arguably India’s most famous family conglomerate and spans at least 100 companies in as many countries, including Britain’s Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover as well as the Anglo-Dutch steel firm Corus.
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