I’m being sacked, Mistry told wife before ouster
MUMBAI: Nirmalya Kumar, a former member of the group executive council (GEC) at Tata Sons Ltd, in his latest blog titled,
recalled the sequence of events a year ago that culminated in the removal of Mistry.
Kumar, who is currently a professor of marketing at Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University and Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute, gave a detailed account of the board meeting which took place on October 24, 2016, afternoon on the fourth floor of Bombay House, the headquarters of the $103 billion Tata group.
While six of the eight-member board that included Vijay Singh, Amit Chandra and Nitin Nohria—all trust nominees; Ajay Piramal, Ronen Sen and Venu Srinivasan—all independent directors, voted in favour of the resolution that sought removal of Cyrus Mistry, while Farida Khambhata, an independent director, as well as Ishaat Hussain, finance director of Tata Sons, abstained from voting.
“It was all over in minutes, no explanations and no opportunity for Cyrus Mistry to prepare a rebuttal,” says Kumar in his blog.
At 3pm, Mistry returned to his room and started “packing his personal effects.” He was informed by F N Subehdar, chief operating officer of Tata Sons, that it was “unnecessary for Mistry to return the next day” when the latter queried him about the same.mistry then called his childhood friend and top notch lawyer, Apurva Diwanji, who reached Bombay House within 10 minutes and frisked him out, avoiding the media glare.
Minutes before the board meeting, as Mistry was pouring through the board papers, Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, and Nitin Nohria, a Tata Sons director, walked in.
Nohria informed Mistry that as the relationship between him and Tata has not been working, Tata Trusts had decided to move a board resolution removing him as chairman of Tata Sons.
Mistry was offered the option of resigning or facing the resolution for his removal at the upcoming board meeting. “Cyrus calmly responds with ‘gentlemen you are free to take it up at the board meeting and I will do what I have to do’,” wrote Kumar. He sent a text “I am being sacked” to his wife Rohiqa, before putting on his jacket and heading to the boardroom.
Oblivious of the events at Bombay House, Kumar, along with GEC members N S Rajan and Harish Bhat, was on a panel at an event at Taj-president, where they were to field questions from 100 Tata executives on the group’s big data initiative.
On hearing about Mistry’s sudden removal, the three members left for Kumar’s apartment. They turned on the television and were shocked to see all channels plastered with news of the removal of Mistry, along with GEC memberskumar,rajanand Madhu Kannan.