The much-anticipated board meeting of Tata Sons on Thursday cleared two issues with significant implications for the future of the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate. One was about the mandatory listing of Tata Sons and another dealt with the company’s top leadership. While a tumultuous board meeting cleared the listing proposal, it also approved a third five-year term for chairman N Chandrasekaran in an extraordinary turn of events.
Within less than a week of the Reserve Bank of India rejecting Tata Sons’ application seeking to deregister itself as a core investment company (CIC), thereby mandating an immediate stock exchange listing, a three-hour-long board meeting of Tata Sons gave it the all-clear despite stiff opposition from Tata Trusts chairman Noel Tata, who is also a nominee director with veto power, it is learnt. “Noel Tata was outvoted in his attempt to block the Tata Sons listing,” a source pointed out.
Ahead of the board meeting, a tussle between the two Tata Trusts nominee directors on the board of Tata Sons — Noel Tata and Venu Srinivasan — is believed to have broken out over being part of the Tata Sons listing discussion and voting on a resolution related to that subject. A source said that a resolution approved by Noel Tata sought to keep Venu Srinivasan out of the loop on the Tata Sons listing as the latter had gone against the Tata Trusts stand on listing a few months ago. In a media statement, Srinivasan had favoured listing for better governance and as an avenue to raise funds. Srinivasan is learnt to have fought back on Thursday to exercise his veto power too, while cancelling Noel Tata’s vote on the matter.
During the board meeting on Thursday, responding to Noel Tata’s stand that Tata Sons should appeal against the RBI mandate on Tata Sons’ listing, Chandrasekaran (Chandra, as he is called) is learnt to have stood his ground, stating that the company must move forward on listing as directed by the central bank. At the annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders, the subject is expected to come up again, sources said. At this point, there is no certainty on when the AGM can be held. The Maharashtra Charity Commissioner’s order defreezing one of the key trusts — Sir Ratan Tata Trust — has put the AGM on hold for months. This is because the Articles of Association (AoA) of Tata Sons require the two key trusts — SRTT and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) — to jointly select a representative for an AGM.
On Chandra’s third term, the Tata Sons board on Thursday cleared a third five-year term for him. This comes within a month of Chandra writing to the directors that he would not offer himself for a third term, citing a lack of consensus at the February 2026 board meeting. Noel Tata had opposed Chandra’s third term then, while raising the issue of the performance of certain Tata companies such as Air India and Tata Digital.
Even as Tata Trusts had passed a resolution last year to extend Chandra’s term by another five years, Noel Tata brought up the performance issue in February. The leadership issue has been on hold ever since.
Ever since Ratan Tata’s death in October 2024, Tata Trusts has been in the midst of infighting. Subsequently, the leadership of Tata Trusts and Tata Sons clashed over critical matters, culminating in Chandra’s letter saying he would not like to renew his term. That scenario changed at the latest board meeting on Thursday, when directors insisted that Chandra must be given a third term for the sake of business continuity, as the Tata Trusts resolution had noted last year.