In 6 hilarious GIFs, Ratan Tata-Cyrus Mistry spat explained
Between the thousands of family feuds going on in Hindi TV serials, the Yadavs' Game-of-Thrones-esque pari-war and the Tata-Mistry kerfuffle, it is likely to get your story and timelines all mixed up. To avoid all that, I have over-simplified the complex story of the Tata-Mistry power struggle and condensed it into six really shitty GIFs.
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| Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry in happier times. (Photo credit: India Today) |
Let us start from the very beginning. In 2011, Cyrus Mistry, erstwhile managing director of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, (incidentally the largest stakeholder in Tata Sons, outside the family), was asked to become the new chairman of Tata Sons. He politely refused, because he wanted to focus on his own business.
By December 2012, Ratan Tata, unable to find a replacement for himself, asked Mistry once more. This time Mistry agreed, and became the new chairman of Tata Sons.
Once he ascended the Iron Throne, Mistry realised just how uncomfortable a chair made of broken swords can be. According to Mistry, he was pushed into the position of a "lame duck" chairman. While joining, he had no idea about what he was getting into (given the number of things wrong with the company) and was immediately faced with the Herculean task of trying to keep the company standing.
After a 46-month-reign, during which Mistry indulged in a lot of cost-cutting here and there, the Tata Sons Board on October 24, 2016, sacked him. The board gave no reason for his abrupt removal and named his predecessor Ratan Tata, 78, as interim chairman. Sources inside the company, however, say it was because the Tata Trusts weren't impressed with Mistry's performance.
Mistry's sacking was meant to be quick and clean. Unfortunately, it did not lay out as planned. Mistry, post his ouster, wrote a letter to the company leadership expressing sadness and anger over this "betrayal". In the letter, Mistry also gave details of the dire state of affairs of the Tata Group when he was handed the charge, implying that being sacked on the grounds of non-performance was simply unjust. Somehow, this confidential email, got leaked to the media and suddenly everyone got to know that things aren't all hunky-dory inside the Tata Empire.
Whoever leaked the letter (a lot of people suspect it was Mistry), the details mentioned in it do not make the Tata Group look good. According to the details in it, a realistic assessment of five Tata companies, namely Indian Hotels Company, Tata Motors, Tata Steel Europe, Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project and Tata Tele Services, can lead to a nearly $18 billion write-down - something that has got even the BSE and NSE's underwear in a bunch.
In a statement on October 27, the Tata Group rubbished Mistry's claims. They said he was misrepresenting facts and his allegations were entirely untrue. They even said that Mistry leaking the confidential letter was undignified. You know what that means: FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
That's the story so far. I shall add worse GIFs, if this saga continues to be this spicy!