Tata Sons have announced changes in the roles and responsibilities of some key group executives, a first such move after the board decided to replace Cyrus Mistry on October 24, as chairman of the $103 billion conglomerate.
Under the changes, S Padmanabhan will now oversee the human resources department of the group, along with his existing responsibilities of leading the Tata Business Excellence Group. The HR portfolio was initially handled by NS Rajan, who has forwarded his resignation. Tata Sons also said that Mukund Rajan would oversee the operations of the overseas representative offices of Tata Sons in the USA, Singapore, Dubai, and China. "Harish Bhat, in addition to his (current) responsibilities for marketing and customer centricity, will henceforth also be responsible for managing the Tata brand. In the interim, he will oversee the functions of strategy and business development," the company said in a statement.
The group has retained Gopichand Katragadda as chief technology officer. Nirmalya Kumar, NS Rajan, and Madhu Kannah who were earlier part of the Group Executive Council "have decided to explore options outside Tata Sons and have left the services of the company," the statement added. A huge hoopla was made following Cyrus Mistry's ousting from the Tata Group. With a battle ensuing between Tata and Mistry, the conglomerate faced a recent setback when all six independent directors of the Tata Group's prestigious Indian Hotels Company publicly reposed faith in Mistry's leadership ahead of a scheduled board meet.
Nadir Godrej, Deepak Parekh, Keki Dadiseth, Ireena Vittal, Gautam Banerjee and Vibha Paul Rishi met at Bombay House, and unanimously praised Mistry's strategic direction and leadership to the company. In a statement to stock exchanges, the independent directors said that taking into account board assessments and performance evaluations carried out over the years, "the independent directors unanimously expressed their full confidence in the chairman, Cyrus Mistry." They also said that their decision was being made public because IHCL is a listed entity and it was essential for them to let the company's investors and public at large know of their views so that they could take an informed decision on its stock.
Meanwhile, brand Tata has slipped three places to the seventh spot in the India's Most Attractive Brand 2016 list by TRA Research.
