Tata hiring bankers for team to sell, merge units

mumbai — Nearly six months after his turbulent elevation to run India’s biggest conglomerate, Natarajan Chandrasekaran is assembling a team of dealmakers to refocus some of the group’s biggest businesses, expand its financial services and consumer businesses and sell or merge dozens of smaller units, according to interviews with senior executives.

As many as one-third of the group’s 100-plus units could go as Chandrasekaran and his team try to balance the need to prune unprofitable businesses at the 149-year-old group with the Tata family legacy of social responsibility, according to officials who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private.

Chandra, as the 54-year-old chairman is called by his colleagues, has set his primary task to bring more focus to a conglomerate that assembles buses in Africa, serves kebabs at London’s ritzy Bombay Brasserie and sells cheap bags of salt in Indian supermarkets among much else. There are plans to merge consumer and retail businesses, bring infrastructure

Chandrasekaran is hoping to increase the efficiency of the conglomerate Harish H. V, partner, Grant Thornton India LLP

firms under one umbrella, club defense units together and combine technology firms, according to the people.

“Chandrasekaran is hoping to increase the efficiency of the conglomerate and exit from businesses which don’t fit the group’s priorities or don’t have the ability to scale,” said Harish H. V., partner at consultancy firm Grant Thornton India LLP.

“He is trying to simplify the complex conglomerate business structures, many of which were created in another era due to licensing and other regulatory reasons or the need to form joint ventures.”

A Tata Group spokesman said the company does not comment on such matters.