Tata Sons makes organisational changes; Padmanabhan to head HR

Mumbai: Over a week after Cyrus Mistry was ousted as Chairman, Tata Sons today announced organisational changes bringing in S Padmanabhan as the group human resources head. [caption id=“attachment_3085110” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Besides, the former Tata brand custodian under Mistry’s regime Mukund Rajan has been given the responsibility of overseeing operations of the overseas representative offices of Tata Sons in the USA, Singapore, Dubai and China. This is in addition to his existing responsibility of ethics and sustainability. Harish Bhat, who is responsible for marketing and customer centricity, will henceforth also be responsible for managing the Tata Brand, Tata Sons said in a statement. “In the interim, he will oversee the functions of Strategy and Business Development,” it added. Padmanabhan has been given the responsibility of Group Human Resources in addition to his existing role of leading the Tata Business Excellence Group. Tata Sons further said Gopichand Katragadda will continue to be the Group Chief Technology Officer, while Sanjay Singh will oversee the Public Affairs function out of the Delhi office. Three members of the now-disbanded Group Executive Council set up by Mistry – Nirmalya Kumar, N S Rajan and Madhu Kannan – have already quit. They have decided to explore options outside Tata Sons and have left the services of the company, the statement added. On October 24, Tata Sons board had replaced Mistry as Chairman and appointed Ratan Tata as interim Chairman. The company had said it would find a new Chairman in four months. Since then, a war of words has been going on between the Tatas and Mistry, who alleged that he was pushed into a position of “lame duck” chairman and changes in decision making process created alternate power centres in Tata Group. Tata retorted saying Mistry’s removal was “absolutely necessary” for the future success of the Tata Group and insisted that the decision was a well-considered and serious one for its board members.