SAN FRANCISCO: Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who put a staid and sprawling Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died, the Tata Group said in a statement late on Wednesday. He was 86.
Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years as chairman, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital, two sources with direct knowledge of his medical situation told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.
“It is with a profound sense of loss that we bid farewell to Mr. Ratan Naval Tata, a truly uncommon leader whose immeasurable contributions have shaped not only the Tata Group but also the very fabric of our nation,” the company said.
Ratan Tata “was a visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social media platform X. “Extremely pained by his passing away. My thoughts are with his family, friends and admirers in this sad hour.”
After graduating with a degree in architecture at Cornell University, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.
He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd. as well as Tata Steel Ltd, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.
In 1991, he took the helm of the conglomerate when his uncle J.R.D. Tata stepped down — the passing of the baton coming just as India embarked on radical reforms that opened up its economy to the world and ushered in an era of high growth.
In one of his first steps, Ratan Tata sought to rein in the power of some heads of Tata Group’s companies, enforcing retirement ages, promoting younger people to senior positions and ramping up control over companies.
He founded telecommunications firm Tata Teleservices in 1996 and took IT firm Tata Consultancy Services. the group’s cash cow, public in 2004. But to grow properly, the group determined it needed to look beyond Indian shores.
It “was the quest for growth and changing the ground rules to say that we could grow by acquisitions which earlier we had never done,” he said in an interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013.
The group purchased British tea firm Tetley in 2000 for $432 million and Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007 for $13 billion, at the time the biggest takeover of a foreign firm by an Indian company. Tata Motors then acquired British luxury auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co. in 2008 for $2.3 billion.
His pet projects at Tata Motors included the Indica — the first car model designed and built in India — as well as the Nano, touted as the world’s cheapest car. He contributed initial sketches for both models.
The Indica was a commercial success. The Nano, however, priced at just 100,000 rupees (about $1,200) and the culmination of Ratan Tata’s dream to produce an affordable car for India’s masses, was hurt by initial safety issues and bungled marketing. It was discontinued a decade after its launch.
A licensed pilot who would occasionally fly the company plane, Ratan Tata never married and was known for his quiet demeanor, relatively modest lifestyle and philanthropic work.
About two-thirds of share capital of Tata Sons, the group’s holding company, is held by philanthropic trusts.
His leadership at Tata was not without controversy — most notably a bitter public feud after the company ousted Cyrus Mistry, a scion of the billionaire Shapoorji Pallonji clan, as chairman of Tata Sons in 2016.
The Tata Group said Mistry had failed to turnaround poorly performing businesses while Mistry accused Ratan Tata, who was chairman emeritus of the conglomerate, of interfering and creating an alternate power center at the group.
After he stepped back from the Tata Group, Ratan Tata became known as a prominent investor in Indian startups, backing a plethora of companies including digital payments firm Paytm, Ola Electric, a unit of ride hailing firm Ola, and home and beauty services provider Urban Company.
Among his many awards, he received the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honor, in 2008 for exceptional and distinguished service in trade and industry.
($1 = 83.9330 Indian rupees)
Ratan Tata, who put India’s Tata Group on the global map, dies at 86
https://arab.news/j5hkc
Ratan Tata, who put India’s Tata Group on the global map, dies at 86
- Tata transformed his family’s business conglomerate, the Tata Group, into a multinational corporation
- Tata Group put an indelible stamp on Indian life while acquiring British brand names like Tetley Tea and Jaguar
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
TORONTO: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. He was responding to US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing.
Carney said his recent agreement with China merely cuts tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with tariffs.
Trump claims otherwise, posting that “China is successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada. So sad to see it happen. I only hope they leave Ice Hockey alone! President DJT”
The prime minister said under the free trade agreement with the US and Mexico there are commitments not to pursue free trade agreements with nonmarket economies without prior notification.
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other nonmarket economy,” Carney said. “What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in the last couple of years.”
In 2024, Canada mirrored the United States by putting a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100 percent import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25 percent on pork and seafood.
Breaking with the United States this month during a visit to China, Carney cut its 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on those Canadian products.
Carney has said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports coming into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1 percent, growing to about 70,000 over five years. He noted there was no cap before 2024. He also has said the initial cap on Chinese EV imports was about 3 percent of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada annually and that, in exchange, China is expected to begin investing in the Canadian auto industry within three years.
Trump posted a video Sunday in which the chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association warns there will be no Canadian auto industry without US access, while noting the Canadian market alone is too small to justify large scale manufacturing from China.
“A MUST WATCH. Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history. All their businesses are moving to the USA. I want to see Canada SURVIVE AND THRIVE! President DJT,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump’s post on Saturday said that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
“We can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We have a , but based off — based on that, which is going to be renegotiated this summer, and I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos.”
Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance.
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the US under Trump. Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” and he warned about coercion by great powers — without mentioning Trump’s name. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the World Economic Forum.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed into the United States as a 51st state. He posted an altered image on social media this week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
