Mumbai: Noel Tata has been chosen to succeed Ratan Naval Tata as Chairman of the Tata Trusts, the philanthropic entities that own the holding company of the Tata Group companies.
The board of Tata Trusts met on Friday morning and approved the appointment of Noel Tata, the half-brother of Ratan Tata, as the chair of Tata Sons, according to media reports.
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Ratan Tata, who is credited with transforming the Tata Group into a globally renowned conglomerate, died at age 86, on October 9.
Tata Sons is 65.9% owned by the trusts, 12.87% by half a dozen Tata Group companies, and 18.4% by the Mistry family. Ahead of the Tata Trusts meeting, Noel Tata had emerged as the front-runner to be the successor.
Noel Tata is the Vice Chairman of Tata Steel and watch company Titan. His mother Simone Tata, a French-Swiss Catholic who is Ratan Tata’s stepmother, is currently chairman of Trent, Voltas, Tata Investment Corporation, and Tata International.
Noel Tata has been a key figure in Tata Group’s growth since he joined in the early 2000s and was appointed as the Chairman on Friday following a meeting of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the Dorabji Tata Trust.
Tata Trust — the umbrella body that manages functions of all 14 Tata trusts. The ownership of Tata Sons is largely held by two key trusts — the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust — which together comprise over 50 percent of the ownership. Tata Trust at present has Venu Srinivasan, Vijay Singh, and Mehli Mistry as executive committee members.
Ratan Tata’s younger brother, Jimmy, is not involved in the family business and lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment in South Mumbai’s Colaba.
Born in a traditional Parsi family in 1937, Ratan Tata was brought up by his grandmother after his parents, Naval and Sooni Tata, divorced when he was 10.
