Former head of Tata Sons Cyrus Mistry dies in a road accident

Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry speaks to shareholders during the annual general meeting of the Tata Consulting Services (TCS) in Mumbai on June 28, 2013. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Cyrus Mistry, 54, the former head of India’s Tata Sons group, died in a road accident near the financial capital Mumbai on Sunday, Indian police said.

Mistry was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company for the $300 billion conglomerate Tata, in a boardroom coup in 2016, leading to a long-running legal dispute in which India’s Supreme Court eventually ruled in Tata. . group fit.

The accident occurred in the city of Palghar, about 100 km north of Mumbai, on Sunday afternoon. Patil, the chief police officer of Balgar district, said Mistry was traveling to Mumbai from Gujarat with three others.

A senior Mumbai police official said the car in which Mistry was traveling hit a barrier, and he died at the scene.

Several prominent politicians and industrialists have tweeted their condolences following news of Misteri’s death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Mistry’s death as coming early and shocking.

“He was a promising business leader who believed in India’s economic prowess. His death is a great loss to the world of commerce and industry,” Modi wrote on Twitter.

The Mistry family and Tata’s children did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tata Consulting Services, in which Tata Sons is a majority stake, said it mourned the early death of its former chairman, adding that the company offered its “deepest condolences and prayers” to his family and friends.

“He was a warm, friendly and loyal person, and he built a strong relationship with the TCS family during his tenure at the helm of the company,” TCS said in a statement.

Mistry was the sixth head of the Tata Group, a conglomerate that started over 150 years ago, the second not called Tata. He was the brother-in-law of Noel Tata, the half-brother of Mistry’s predecessor as Ratan Tata’s chief.

Mistry’s grandfather first bought shares in Tata Sons in the 1930s. The Shapoorji Pallonji Group (SP), founded by Mistry’s father, currently owns approximately 18% of the shares, making it the largest single shareholder in a company mostly controlled by trusts.

The decades-old relationship between SP Group, one of the country’s largest construction companies, and Tata Group soured after his dismissal, and since then SP Group has been seeking to “separate its interests” from Tata Sons.

Fund managers Reuters spoke to at the time of Mistry’s appointment described him as little known in business circles.

After graduating in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London and in Management from London Business School, Mistry described himself as a voracious reader of business books and a golfer, and shared his family’s love of horses.

SP Group did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on Mistry’s death.

(Reporting by Rupham Jain) Additional reporting by Nalor Sithurman. Written by Sudarshan Varadan. Editing by Frances Kerry and Jean Harvey

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