Serial entrepreneur C. Sivasankaran has accused Cyrus Mistry, the ousted chairman of Tata Sons, of deliberately targeting him for no reason in the latter’s stepped-up fight with Ratan Tata.
Mr. Sivasankaran was reacting to insinuations made by Mr. Mistry that information on a decision taken by the board of Tata Sons on September 15 to take legal recourse to recover dues from Mr. Sivasankaran was leaked. “Within a few days (of the board meeting), Tata Sons received a legal notice instead,’’ Mr. Mistry had alleged.
Taking umbrage at this charge, Mr. Sivasankaran pointed out that he had prepared the legal notice to be served on Tata Sons by a senior Supreme Court advocate in August itself. Claiming that he was the wronged person in the entire episode, he questioned the inaction of Mr. Mistry all these years since he had taken over as the chairman of Tata Sons. “I made my investment in 2006. I had invested close to Rs.1,000 crore. I have paid Rs. 2,000 crore as interest to commercial banks,” he said. Even at the time of the investment, Tata Sons had guaranteed principal and interest, he said. This figured in the 2007-08 balance-sheet of Tata Sons, he added.
‘Enormous loss’
He held Mr. Mistry-led Tata Sons and NTT DoCoMo collectively responsible for the mismanagement of Tata Teleservices and causing ‘enormous’ loss to his investment. “Mr. Mistry had not discovered anything new,” he said. “I had myself written to him on the issue way back in 2013 explaining how mine was a Tata-assisted investment,” he pointed out. Mr. Sivasankaran wondered why Mr. Mistry had waited ‘all this while’ and was raking up the issue now. Also, he said, he could not comprehend why Mr. Mistry had not done anything to fix responsibility for the mismanagement of Tata Teleservices. “Nobody was sacked. No legal notice was served on me all these years,” he said.
“Mr. Mistry should have resigned on the day when he was removed (as chairman) from Tata Sons.” By over-staying, he had created artificial pain and destroyed value, he said. “In the four years during which he was chairman of Tata Sons, he destroyed Rs.35,000 crore of Tata Teleservices value,” he added. Mr. Sivasankaran said he wanted Tata Sons and NTT DoCoMo to compensate him for the investment loss. The Siva Group, he said, would insist that the compensation be made to enable it pay IDBI, SBI, LIC, United Bank of India, Central Bank and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) with whom it had pledged the shares of Tata Teleservices.
Elaborating the context in which the investment was made, Mr. Sivasankaran said “mutual trust and moral responsibilities’’ had played a key role in the Siva Group picking up shares in Tata Teleservices. Pointing out that Siva Group’s investment in Tata Teleservices was largely a Tata Group-assisted one (through fund support and provision of comfort letter), he, nevertheless, asserted that it was also occasioned by the fact that Tata Teleservices was in dire need of equity infusion at that time. Mr. Sivasankaran asserted that Siva Group’s initial investment was the trigger for others such as Temasek and NTT DoCoMo to pitch in funds into Tata Teleservices at a higher premium subsequently.
