The Tata-Mistry war continues!

Conglomerate Tata Sons recently removed Cyrus Mistry as its Chairman, ex-Chairman Ratan Tata took back as the interim Chairman for four months. Ever since that, a tug of war with acquisitions and mismanagement is taking place between Tatas and Mistrys.

Today, Tata Sons have announced the appointed of Ishaat Hussain as Chairman of their highly successful IT firm Tata Consultancy Services. “For assessing the results during his tenure, it would indeed be appropriate to exclude the income (i.e. dividend) from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) because Mistry does not really contribute materially to TCS’ management and TCS has needed no funds from Tata Sons for its growth,” the conglomerate said in a statement.

“Tata Sons has historically exercised control over its group companies through its shareholding and commonality of senior Directors (apart from the Chairman) which had acted as a binding force in the group for many years and which has enhanced the credibility and creditworthiness of the group companies. We now have an unacceptable new structure where the Chairman alone is the only common Director across several companies and this situation could not be allowed to go on,” it added.

Since Mistry’s ouster, shares of theTata Group have taken a knock. For instance, Tata Global Beverages and Indian Hotels have shed near 13% and 17% respectively. Many others including Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Communications, TCS and Tata Steel have declined 4-10%.

Mistry took over the 100 billion salt-to-software conglomerate nearly four years back. Ratan Tata has lead Tata Sons for nearly 21 years after being chosen as a successor by his uncle, the iconic JRD Tata, in 1991.