Statement in favour of N Chandrasekhar.
There have been some press reports alleging various conflicts of interest. For one I don’t thing these are very important or relevant:
https://lnkd.in/gdJF53Qe
These are small time conflicts compared to what is par for the course at Tata Sons during his regime and before.
For around twenty years, there was NO DISCLOSURE by either party that his division head and thereafter the TCS CEO was his father in law. There was no disclosure by the CEO as well. And this was perfect in keeping with the letter of the law. If you go through the definition of related party in the old Section 2 of the companies act, father in law or son in law is not a related party. And therefore no disclosure needs to be made.
In terms of spirit this is a disaster. Non disclosure was in more ways than one a breach of trust. And misrepresentation.
It didnt stop at that. If one reads the various communications from Cyrus Mistry, a lot of money was going around. Who were these parties ?
The independent directors at Tata Sons were always interlinked and inter dependent. Take two marquee ones. Amit chandra and Nitin Nohria. Amit’s sister is Nitin’s wife. Whilst the company checks independence of Director vis a vis the company – there is no disclosure of interdependence of directors. In fact there is no need for such a disclosure in law.
Now come to the role of the so called “external directors and trustees”. Pramit Jhaveri was heavily fined by RBI when he was CEO of the havala bank, declared “unfit and improper” to continue and made to resign. He jumped straight in as a trustee in Tata Trust. In 140 crore Indians, TaTA Sons could only find him fit to be a trustee. That too immediately after being declared unfit and improper to continue in any financial services bank. Not only TaTas but even L&T found him to be the only suitable person among 140 crore Indians to be suitable. HDFC he anyway controlled. The depth and complexity of the nexus between Tata, L&T and HDFC will make any prior scam in India look like an act of spirituality. And this includes Yes Bank, Dewan Housing and Reliance Capital.
It was a mistake on behalf of Tata Trusts to bring in Ajay Piramal or Venu Srinivasan. They have directly competing businesses. Ajay Piramal left Anita George to take his place – a horror which has just begun. Nitin Nohria was his consultant acc
There are other connections which will make us as a country look like a laughing stock. Let’s wait for the cabinet reshuffle and then address those. And if the reshuffle doesn’t happen, we can look at it after September 30th.
