Jimmy Naval Tata, the brother, a Tata trustee, who lives in the shadows

MUMBAI: This is a tale of the other brother. While reams of newsprint and countless TV hours have been dedicated to one, the other has never made it to the headlines. Not many are even aware of his existence. For most of his 76 years,

Jimmy Naval Tata

has lived in the shadow of his larger-than-life older brother, Ratan Naval Tata.

A shareholder in Tata Sons and several other Tata companies, the reclusive Jimmy is a trustee of Sir Ratan Tata Trust, a position he inherited after his father Naval died in 1989 in accordance with his will. Naval was originally not a Tata; he was born in a middle-class Parsi family and was adopted by Sir Ratanji Tata’s wife Navajbai after his father died.

Barring his trusteeship, Jimmy has no role to play at

Bombay House

— the epicentre of the war between Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry .

But from his spartan 2-BHK apartment on the sixth floor of Hampton Court in Colaba, he has kept track of every little twist and turn at India’s largest conglomerate, almost to the point of obsession.

He doesn’t own a mobile phone and he does not have a secretary. Newspapers seem to be his window to the outside world. He writes in flowing long-hand and his signature bears a certain resemblance to Ratan Tata’s. A TV sits, covered in cloth, in one corner of his living room. The walls are lined with files and large, dusty suitcases.

When asked for his views on the ongoing war, he hands over six bulging files and says, “Whatever you want to know about me and my opinions is in here.” The files, which are in our possession, contain hundreds of pages of hand and typewritten letters to the trustees of Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the board of Tata Sons over many years — right up till Nov 18, 2016. They convey his unhappiness over a range of decisions, including the appointment of Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria to the board of the Tata group’s holding company about three years ago.

There is a July 2015 letter from him to Tata Sons — according to which he holds 3,262 ordinary shares — with a subject line, ‘In case of liquidation of Tata Sons Ltd’, where he has estimated the break-up value at more than “Rs 10 lakh crore/share”.

Every page of every letter sent and received is rubber-stamped with his name and address. Many of them point to strained relations with the people at the helm of the group that bears his family name.

Also in the files are countless newspaper clippings — related mostly to the Tata Group — accompanied by sharp, caustic comments.

Jimmy told TOI that he started his career with the Tata Group under his father in the textile business, which subsequently ran into rough weather. Jimmy and Ratan have a half-brother Noel, from Naval Tata’s second wife Simone. Noel is MD of Tata International and chairman of Trent, and brother-in-law of Cyrus Mistry, and there’s been speculation in the media about his chances of being named the next chairman of Tata Sons.

People working in the building where Jimmy lives said the bachelor rarely steps out and is extremely wary of opening the door to visitors. TOI visited him twice, and only after a close examination of our ID cards did he let us in.

Jimmy, who also owns shares in TCS, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels and Tata Power, said he had never voted on any resolution of the Tatas and had, right from the beginning, decided to abstain from the extraordinary general meetings to remove Cyrus.

When asked whether he would, like the group’s founders, leave his estate to a trust after his death, pat came the reply, “Let them fight it out just as they are fighting now”.


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