Tata-Mistry row: Tata Sons, TCS boards to meet today to revoke Cyrus's voting power

The board of directors of Tata Sons will be meeting later today to consider stripping off of the ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry’s proxy powers. A proxy power enables a person to vote and attend the meetings of the companies. [caption id=“attachment_3099158” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Cyrus Mistry (L) and Ratan Tata[/caption] The meeting to do away with the proxy powers of former Tata Sons chairman will be on the agenda, while other important developments happened since last week would also be discussed during the meet, a  report in The Economic Times said. The report did not state whether Mistry will attend the meeting. While Ratan Tata is the interim chairman of the holding company Tata Sons, other board members are Farida Khambata, Venu Srinivasan, Ajay Piramal, Amit Chandra, N Chandrasekaran and Ralf Speth, Nitin Nohria and Vijay Singh, the ET report added. However, a PTI report said there is a strong possibility that Mistry might attend the Tata Son’s board meeting today as he continues to be a director despite being removed from chairmanship position late last month. This will be Tata Sons’ first move since the ouster of Mistry from the chairmanship on 24 October. Tata group company Tata Consultancy Services will also be holding the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders today to remove Cyrus Mistry from the board. Last week, the board of Tata Sons had replaced Cyrus Mistry with the 69-year old Ishaat Hussain as interim chairman of the group’s software company TCS. After being expelled as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, there has been a flurry of sharp and critical remarks from both the Tata and Mistry camps since then. However, it hasn’t been a smooth sailing for the interim Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata, as independent directors at several Tata group companies are divided in their opinion over the unceremonious removal of Cyrus Mistry. In fact, independent directors of Tata Motors, Indian Hotels and Tata Chemicals have come out in support of Mistry’s strategy during his tenure. On the other hand, board of Tata Global Beverages unanimously agreed to replace Mistry as chairman. Among the independent directors, Wadia group chairman Nusli Wadia has been openly backing Mistry in the group’s company’s board meet, bringing lot of embarrassment to Ratan Tata. Wadia is a director on the boards of three Tata entities — Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals. Notwithstading pressure, Tata Sons has also sought an extraordinary general meeting seeking the ouster of Nusli Wadia.