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Tata Steel held a committee meeting on Wednesday, which saw a number of directors in attendance, to gauge the situation following the tussle between Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry. This comes ahead of Tata Steel’s board meeting slated on Friday to consider quarterly results.
The impromptu meeting was called to gauge onground situation in the wake of investor concerns in the company, multiple sources close to the development told BusinessLine .
“The meeting started at about 2.30 p.m. at Bombay House with many issues ranging from providing support to interim chairman Ratan Tata to addressing institutional investors’ concerns were discussed,” said one of the sources, who declined to be identified.
The names of the members who attended the meeting could not be confirmed. Independent directors on Tata Steel board include Subodh Bhargav, OP Bhatt, Mallika Srinivasan, Jacobus Schraven, Andrew M Robb and Nusli N Wadia. Mistry heads the board with Tata Steel Managing Director TV Naredran, DK Mehrotra, Koushik Chaterjee and Ishaat Hussain being the other directors.
In response to a mail, a Tata Steel spokesperson declined to comment, terming it “speculative”. Earlier during the week, foreign portfolio investors shot off letters to Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals board members expressing their concerns over the ongoing spat.
The financial institutional investors expect the uncertainty to percolate down the rungs and hit the functioning of the companies, particularly when there are signs of economic revival, said a source, different from the ones mentioned earlier. They were also concerned that the Tata-led management reversing the decisions taken by Mistry to trim debt by selling of assets.
Both Tata Chemicals and Tata Steel have made huge provisions on their overseas asset and sold assets to bring down the debt levels. Tata Steel is struggling to trim debt by selling its European asset. The change in top leadership may slow down the process of finding a suitor for its struggling UK asset including that of Port Talbot plant which employs 4,000 people.
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