Tata Sons

A legal notice has been sent to the trustees of Sir Ratan Tata Trust regarding the transfer of shares in Tata Sons from a small trust to Naval Tata, father of Noel Tata and the late Ratan Tata.

Noel Tata's rejection of Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh's reappointment at a Tata Trust affiliate signals a fracture within philanthropic entities that control the group. This discord complicates future decisions at Tata Sons given that most decisions at the trusts need unanimous approval.

The move complicates matters for the holding company of the Tata group, which has been trying to stay private, especially since RBI introduced its scale-based supervision of non-bank lenders.

Internal rifts, legal challenges, and a debate over going public have sparked a power struggle within the group following the death of Ratan Tata.

Meeting may discuss keeping Tata Sons private, and an extension for its chairman N. Chandrasekaran. It may also include a performance review of new-age businesses and an exit strategy for the Shapoorji Pallonji Group.

New norms, currently a draft circular, take away a part of RBI’s discretion to decid who gets to be on the list. The defining criteria for a non-bank to enter the club is if it has assets of ₹1 trillion or more. Tata Sons had total assets of ₹1.75 trillion on a standalone basis as on 31 March 2025.

Its latest payout of ₹28,292.1 crore in the financial year ended March 2026 was lower than the previous year’s ₹32,184.2 crore, marking the third decline in total shareholder returns over the past six years, and the fourth such fall since the company went public in 2004.

The RBI has proposed changes to regulations for non-banking financial companies, simplifying criteria for upper layer NBFCs. The status of Tata Sons, which faces internal disagreements among its shareholders on a listing, remains unclear as it had previously surrendered its NBFC licence.