Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up MUMBAI, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Cyrus Mistry, the 54-year-old former chairman of India’s Tata Sons group, died in a car accident near the financial capital Mumbai on Sunday, Indian police said. Mistry was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the $300 billion Tata software conglomerate, in a boardroom coup in 2016, sparking a long-running legal battle that India’s top court eventually ruled on to Tata The favor of the group. The accident occurred in Palghar, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mumbai, on Sunday afternoon. Mistry was traveling to Mumbai from Gujarat with three others, said B. Patil, the top police official in Palghar district. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up A senior Mumbai police official said the car Mistry was traveling in crashed into a divider and he died at the scene of the accident. Several prominent politicians and industrialists sent their condolences on Twitter following the news of Mistry’s death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Mistry’s death untimely and shocking. “He was a promising business leader who believed in India’s economic prowess. His death is a great loss to the world of commerce and industry,” Modi tweeted. Mistry’s family and Tata Sons did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. Mistry was the sixth chairman of the Tata group, a conglomerate that began more than 150 years ago, and the second not to be named Tata. He was the brother-in-law of Noel Tata, half-brother of Mistry’s predecessor as chairman Ratan Tata. Mistry’s grandfather first bought shares in Tata Sons in the 1930s. The Shapoorji Pallonji Group (SP), founded by Mistry’s father, currently owns nearly 18% of the shares, making it the single largest shareholder in a company controlled primarily by trusts. The decades-long relationship between SP Group, one of the country’s largest construction companies, and Tata Group was strained after his sacking, and SP Group has since been trying to “separate its interests” from Tata Sons. Fund managers Reuters spoke to at the time of Mistry’s appointment described him as little known in business circles. A graduate in civil engineering from Imperial College London and management from the London Business School, Mistry described himself as a voracious business reader and golfer and shared his family’s love of horses. SP Group did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on Mistry’s death. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Report by Rupam Jain. Written by Sudarshan Varadhan. Edited by Frances Kerry and Jan Harvey Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
