As part of its ongoing corporate governance strengthening exercise and succession planning, Tata Trust has begun strengthening its board of trustees with the recent inclusion of Mehli Mistry, 62, as a director of Meherji Pallonji group on board of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust.
His inclusion takes place even as the Trust announced the retirement of its first professional CEO Srinath Narasimhan, 60, who was appointed in 2020. A search for the next CEO is on and both internal and external candidates are being looked at, an insider said.
There had been speculations in recent months on the possible inclusion of Mehli Mistry, a UK citizen and a confidant of Ratan Tata. Mehli and the late Cyrus Mistry‘s mothers are sisters, but the cousins were not close. Mehli Mistry runs about a dozen companies, with interests ranging from paint distribution to logistics, travel and automotive dealership.
“The appointments are part of Ratan Tata’s larger objective to ensure that larger critical causes are pursued by the Trusts in areas such as malnutrition, cancer treatment, sanitisation and education. He has been making it very clear that goals must be bigger and impactful and that energies cannot be wasted on smaller projects. The addition of people on the trusts are those who are competent and have the right experience and knowledge to help the Trust do that,” said a highly placed official.
As part of its recent corporate governance exercise, the first change implemented was the one about Tata Trusts chairman being barred from holding the post of the chairman of Tata Sons. The articles of association was first amended for Tata Sons since the trust deed would need to be changed to do that. About 66% of the equity capital of group holding company Tata Sons is with the philanthropic trusts endowed by members of the Tata family. The biggest of these are the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. Tata Trust did not comment.
Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, heads the Tata Trusts and has been consulting legal experts to ensure that the interests of both institutions, the Tata Trusts and Tata Sons, are protected. He was the last person to be chairman of both Tata Sons and the Tata Trusts after JRD Tata.