Tata names successor to iconic boss
India's industrial giant Tata Group yesterday named a new chairman, bucking tradition by appointing a non-family member for the first time in its 143-year history.
The announcement brings an end to a long search for a successor to veteran business icon Ratan Tata, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Cyrus P Mistry, a 43-year-old existing Tata board member, was named as the deputy chairman of Tata Sons Group and will take over the reins of the $80 billion salt-to-steel conglomerate next year.
Mistry will work with Ratan Tata over the next year and take over from him when Tata retires in December 2012.
Mistry is also the managing director of the real estate-to-energy Shapoorji Pallonji Group which has an 18 percent stake in the Tata conglomerate.
Ratan Tata, 73, is one of India's most powerful industrialists, who has propelled the group's global expansion.
Tata Group was founded by Ratan Tata's great-great-grandfather Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata in 1868.
It comprises more than 100 companies operating in more than 80 countries and had total revenues of $83.3 billion in 2010-11. Some 58 percent of revenues came from business outside India.
Its 31 publicly-listed firms have a combined market capitalisation of about $77.44 billion as of mid-November and employs more than 425,000 people worldwide, it said.
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