00:00Alright, moving on. A little over a week after being pushed into a corner by the board of Tata Suns,
00:05No Hill Tata has stuck back and stuck back hard.
00:08Tata Trust last evening submitted a proposal to the restructuring of Tata Suns
00:13with an intention to keep it unlisted.
00:16The Tata Trust, which holds a 66% stake in Tata Suns, has proposed a straightforward plan.
00:23Merge two Tata Group operating companies, Tata Electronic Systems Solution and Tata Consultancy engineers
00:29into Tata Suns.
00:31The proposal also aims to ensure that Tata Suns no longer qualifies as a core investment company,
00:38a classification mainly linked to companies that hold investments in other group companies as well.
00:44Now, if the restructuring goes through, Tata Suns would remain an unlisted private company.
00:50But will the other shareholders really buy this strategy?
00:54Here's a report.
01:02Cornered in the boardroom, but far from conceding defeat.
01:06Noel Tata has made his next move in the battle for the future of India's largest business conglomerate.
01:15And this time, the Tata Trust chairman has come armed, not with another objection,
01:20but with a proposal that could fundamentally change the structure of Tata Suns
01:25and potentially keep the Tata Group's holding company away from stock markets.
01:32In a proposal released Monday evening aimed at calming an increasingly bitter corporate battle is one question.
01:41Must Tata Suns go public or can it remain a privately held company, as Tata Trusts has long insisted?
01:53Tata Trusts has suggested merging two unlisted companies, Tata Electronics and Tata Consulting Engineers, directly into Tata Suns.
02:02Tata Trusts claim the new merged entity would have operating revenues of over 1 lakh crore rupees.
02:10Well above its income from financial holdings of 40,000 crore.
02:15Ensuring it is no longer classified primarily as a financial or investment company.
02:20And it will no longer put it on RBI's list of upper-layer NBFC, making it mandatory for it to
02:27list.
02:30The plan is not a done deal, but saw Tata stocks dropping 3-4% on Tuesday.
02:36It also carries a pointed message to the Tata Suns board.
02:41Sources have told Business Today TV that the move by Tata Trusts is effectively a way of telling the board
02:48that such a proposal should have come from the Tata Suns board.
02:53In other words, Noel Tata is not only presenting an alternative route,
02:57he is also questioning the choices made by the board before it decided to move towards a listing.
03:29Confrontation has been building for months.
03:33From the February deadlock over Chandrasekharan's third term to his August announcement that he would step aside,
03:40followed by the RBI's rejection of Tata Suns' deregistration request,
03:45the contentious September board vote and now this restructuring proposal.
03:53What began as a disagreement over leadership has become a much larger contest over ownership rights,
04:00regulatory obligations and the future structure of the Tata group.
04:07The dispute has also reached the highest levels of government,
04:12with reports of both Noel Tata and Chandrasekharan separately briefing senior ministers in Delhi in August.
04:20And now, attention turns to the Tata Suns' annual general meeting,
04:25already delayed amid questions over shareholder participation,
04:28with the company granted an extension until December end.
04:33The meeting could prove decisive for Chandrasekharan's continuation as director,
04:39while the unresolved governance dispute and Noel Tata's latest proposal ensure that the battle is far from settled.
04:47With Krishna Gopalan, Bureau Report, Business Today Television.
