Mumbai — Tata Sons is likely to hold a board meeting Sept. 17 as the company faces questions over a potential listing, leadership succession and a governance impasse involving one of its principal trusts.
The meeting is expected to come after the Reserve Bank of India rejected Tata Sons’ request to surrender its registration as a Core Investment Company.
The RBI decision has revived questions over whether Tata Sons may eventually have to list its shares. The company had sought deregistration after becoming debt-free in an effort to avoid the listing requirement that applies to upper-layer non-banking financial companies.
The issue has also intensified internal debate over the leadership needed to manage any potential listing process.
Chairman N. Chandrasekaran has said he will not seek another term when his current tenure ends Feb. 20, 2027, leaving the group without a clear successor. Analysts have said a listing of a conglomerate of Tata Sons’ size would require leadership clarity and continuity.
The succession process is further complicated by a governance impasse at the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, which owns about 23.56 percent of Tata Sons.
The trust is currently unable to convene trustee meetings because of proceedings before the Maharashtra Charity Commissioner.
The Sir Ratan Tata Trust and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust together control about 66 percent of Tata Sons and must jointly nominate three members of a five-member selection committee tasked with recommending the next chairman.
The restriction on the Sir Ratan Tata Trust has already affected Tata Sons. Its Aug. 18 annual general meeting was adjourned after the two principal trusts were unable to jointly nominate the representative required for the meeting.
Tata Sons was classified as an upper-layer NBFC in September 2022. After becoming debt-free, it applied to surrender its CIC registration so it could remain privately held, but the RBI rejected the request.
The central bank had earlier required Tata Sons to list its shares by September 2025. It has also rejected industry requests to raise the asset threshold or retain a more complex risk-based methodology for classifying large NBFCs. (Source: IANS)
