As the Supreme Court has started final hearings in the dispute between Tata Group’s holding company and Shapoorji Pallonji Groups’ Cyrus Mistry, the longest and the most dramatic corporate battle seems to be nearing its end. On that note, let's rewind and take a look back at a friendship bond between two Parsi families shockingly turned into life-long rivalry :
September, 2006 : Cyrus Mistry, younger son of construction magnate and billionaire, Pallonji Mistry, joined the board of Tata Sons, a year after his father retired from it. Despite being a trusted part of the broad, Mistry's connections with the Tatas date back to 75 years and even went further to family relationships, as Ratan Tata's half brother Noel Tata is married to Cyrus's sister, Aloo Mistry.
December, 2012 : After being selected by a panel to head the group in mid-2012, Mistry took charge of Chairmanship of the conglomerate towards the end of the year.
October 24, 2016 : This was a fateful yet shocking day for the corporate world, when Cyrus Pallonji Mistry, the sixth ever chairman of the Tata Group, was removed from chairmanship of the giant conglomerate for no stated reasons. This decision came as a surprise not just to the people but to Cyrus himself, infact Ratan Tata walked into his room and asked him to resign voluntarily. When Cyrus didn't comply, three hours later, he was voted out in a board meeting while Ratan Tata was named interim chairman.
December, 2016 : What ensued was a corporate battle, with both parties putting up allegations on each other as the major reason behind this breakup was deemed to be irreconcilable differences leading to trust issues between the two. While the Tatas alleged loss of confidence and harm to the group's reputation under Mistry's leadership, Mistry claimed in a letter addressed to the group later that he had to take tough decisions for the benefit of the group and he wasn't even provided with justification on his sudden removal.
January, 2017 : While the Mistry family's company, Shapoorji Pallonji still holds 18.7% share in the group, they decided to move National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) challenging Cyrus's ousting and also claimed oppression of minority shareholders. In response, Tata Sons also issued a legal notice claiming an alleged breach of confidentiality.
July, 2018 : After a year of alleging claims, the pleas challenging Mistry's removal were rejected by NCLT but just a month later, Mistry approached NCLAT in his personal capacity against the NCLT rejection.
December, 2019 : Cyrus reinstated his position as executive chairman of Tata Sons as per NCLAT's order and now it was the group's turn to appeal against the order in Supreme Court. However, much to their dismay the court stayed the order.
January, 2020 : But in a surprising turn of events, Cyrus Mistry expressed his disinterest in continuing as chairman of the group. However, he claimed that he would pursue the SP Group's rightful share in Tata Group.
October, 2019 : The two groups decided to forge a path of complete separation by the SP group asking for their valuation worth Rs. 1.75 lakh crore of stake holding of 18.37% in the Tata group in the form of either cash or marketable securities. But naturally, the Tata Group assigns a much lower value to their share at Rs. 80,000 crore.
December 8, 2020 : The matter is being heard by Chief Justice SA Bobde when there also have been talks of mismanagement allegations by the two groups on each other. Neither of the two seem to be comprising any time soon over the valuation amount.
December 10, 2020 : The war of words in the court has taken an ugly turn making things far more complicated as the Tata Group called the SP Group's settlement proposal "nonsense".
