Four trustees of the Tata charities that control the group have accused two fellow trustees of breaking with their long-held opposition to listing Tata Sons, two sources familiar with a letter sent on Monday said, deepening a dispute at the top of the $277 billion Tata empire.
Tata Sons, the holding company of 26 publicly listed Tata Group companies, is at the centre of a dispute with Tata Trusts, which owns 66% of the company.
In the letter to trustees Venu Srinivasan and Vijay Singh, Noel Tata, his son Neville Tata, senior lawyer Darius Khambata and longtime Tata executive Bhaskar Bhat said exploring ways to keep Tata Sons unlisted was consistent with positions previously approved by the seven charitable trusts that control the company, the sources, who read out contents of the letter to Reuters, said.
The letter was dated October 5, they added. The sources declined to be named as the contents of the letter are not public.
Srinivasan and Singh did not immediately respond to text messages seeking comment. A spokesperson for Tata Trusts did not respond to an email seeking comments.
The authors of the letter have argued the issue of keeping Tata Sons unlisted had been debated and endorsed on multiple occasions and said a recent proposal to restructure Tata Sons was being considered after India's central bank rejected the conglomerate's request for an exemption from rules that would require it to list, the two sources said.
"They also said that trust was not interfering in the affairs of Sons and only voicing opinions on company's listing as controlling shareholders," one of the two sources said.
Reuters reported last week that fault lines had emerged among trustees over proposals that could allow Tata Sons to avoid a stock market listing, while separate complaints have also raised broader governance concerns within the trusts.
