Mumbai, Sep 04: Former chairman of Tata Sons Cyrus Mistry was killed in a road accident near Mumbai on Sunday.
According to Palghar Police, Mistry was travelling from Ahmedabad to Mumbai when his car hit the divider. There were four people in the car. Two died on the spot, including Mistry, while the other two were shifted to hospital, Palghar police officials told ANI.
Who was Mistry?
Cyrus Pallonji Mistry was an Indian-born Irish businessman. He was the chairman of Tata Group from 2012 to 2016.
He was the sixth chairman of the group, and only the second (after Nowroji Saklatwala) to not bear the surname Tata.
Mistry was born to a Parsi family in Mumbai, the younger son of Indian billionaire and construction magnate Pallonji Mistry and Patsy Perin Dubash. Both his parents belong to the Zoroastrian faith and have roots in India. However, Mistry's mother was born in Ireland, and his father chose to take up Irish citizenship.
Mistry was married to Rohiqa Chagla, the daughter of lawyer Iqbal Chagla and granddaughter of jurist MC Chagla. The couple had two sons, Firoz Mistry and Zahan Mistry.
The Pallonji family have been active in business for over a century, and it was in the 1930s that Mistry's grandfather, Shapoorji Mistry, first acquired a stake in Tata Sons. He studied at the prestigious Cathedral & John Connon School in South Mumbai.
Education
He studied at Imperial College London and earned Bachelor of Engineering in civil engineering from University of London in 1990. He later studied at London Business School and was awarded International Executive Masters in management from University of London in 1996.
Career
Mistry joined the family construction company, Shapoorji Pallonji & Co. Ltd as a director in 1991. Mistry was managing director of Shapoorji Pallonji & Company, which is part of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, and also chairman of Tata Sons and of the Tata Group.
In mid-2012, he was chosen by a selection panel to head the Tata Group and took charge in December that year. In October 2016, the board of Tata Group's holding company, Tata Sons, voted to remove Mistry from the post of chairman after offering him an opportunity to resign voluntarily.
Former chairman Ratan Tata then returned as interim chairman, and Natarajan Chandrasekaran was named as the new chairman a few months later.
However, in December 2019, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) declared the appointment of Chandrasekaran as executive chairman illegal, and restored Mistry. However, the Supreme Court stayed NCLAT's order on 10 January 2020. Mistry filed a cross appeal in the court, seeking explanations for anomalies in the NCLAT.
However, the Supreme Court upheld his dismissal.