India’s head of the Tata Group empire, industrialist Ratan Tata, retires on Friday — his 75th birthday — while quietly handing over the reins to a younger successor from outside the immediate family.
Tata, who steered the group for 21 years as chairman, has been credited with transforming it into a streamlined conglomerate of more than 100 companies and earning a global reputation for eye-catching acquisitions of Western firms.
There was no event scheduled to mark the transition but the group last week formally named Cyrus Pallonji Mistry — the first chief from outside the immediate Tata family in its 144-year history — to be the new board chairman once Tata retired.
From luxury cars to steel, Tata is India’s largest group with total combined sales of $100 billion in 2011-12, nearly 60 per cent of which came from business outside India, mainly the United States and Britain.
