N Chandrasekaran's rise puts focus on key Tata crisis managers

MUMBAI: N Chandrasekaran taking charge as the first professional chairman of Tata Sons, the parent of India's largest conglomerate, has brought into focus a few other senior executives who grew in stature as the group fended off the biggest boardroom battle in India Inc's history. Whether all or many of them would be part of Chandra's core team isn't clear, but they are likely to play crucial roles in steering the $108-billion behemoth.

Tata Teleservices MD Srinath Narasimhan, Tata Global Beverages chairman Harish Bhat, Tata Group HR head S Padmanabhan and Tata Sons COO Farokh Subedar, who know the inner workings, are among the top executives whose progress would be watched closely.

Also Read: All you wanted to know about Tata Sons' new boss

They mostly stayed as the backroom men but were effective in scripting the group's moves during the bruising tussle with the ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry. In fact, Chandra himself, as a group stalwart, went on international and domestic roadshows to assuage investor concerns.



Harish Bhat will probably be the only survivor from Mistry's five-member Group Executive Council (GEC), which was dismantled in October last year (other committee members were Mukund Rajan, Madhu Kannan, Nirmalya Kumar and NS Rajan).

It is early days to predict whether Chandra will follow Mistry's strategy of having a single decision-making body -GEC -at Tata Sons or prefer Ratan Tata's style of having two policy making bodies -group corporate centre and group executive office.Sources said Chandra might go for Tata lifers to build his core team as this would also assuage allegations that the number of group insiders were limited in Mistry's A-team. Jaguar Land Rover CEO and Tata Sons director Ralf Speth could be a part of Chandra's main advisory group.

Several of the senior executives, and even Chandra, had good working equations with Mistry, but lined up under the Tata Sons flag convinced it was "the right thing to do as a professional with fiduciary responsibilities". Srinath and Padmanabhan quietly assisted Tata veterans like RK Krishna Kumar and Ishaat Hussain in shoring up the group's defence.Senior most group officials like Titan MD Bhaskar Bhat, Tata Chemicals MD R Mukundan and retired Tata Group veteran Prasad Menon also figured in the war room, with the first two facing off independent directors who backed Mistry's track record. Interestingly , there were several group executives who felt that Tatas shouldn't join the sacked chairman in mudslinging, which, they argued, would only negatively impact the country's most trusted corporate brand.

Besides setting up a core team at Tata Sons, Chandra will also have to appoint a group CFO, a role currently being handled by Ishaat Hussain, who will retire this year. The new chairman could induct an outsider (names of a private equity honcho and senior bankers have been doing rounds) for the job, though there could be two insider contenders.

Chandra spent Friday answering congratulatory calls, emails and SMSes, besides an evening meeting with Ratan Tata. The interim-chairman too congratulated Chandra through a tweet and said his elevation was a "well-deserved recognition" of "proven leadership capabilities". He said that the job of leading Tata Sons was complex but he was sure Chandra will "take the group to new heights".