Chandrasekaran firm seeks ₹330cr park, Tata Sons board not informed
N Chandrasekaran's family company, Hanno One Warehousing, is pursuing a ₹330 crore industrial park in Karnataka.
This isn't their first collaboration. TVS had previously leased land to Hanno in Tamil Nadu.
What's raising eyebrows is that neither Chandrasekaran nor TVS's Venu Srinivasan told the Tata Sons board about these deals.
Experts dispute Tata Sons's nondisclosure claim
Tata Sons says the board didn't need to know, but some governance experts disagree, pointing out that conflicts of interest like this should be shared as per the Tata Code of Conduct.
Adding to the drama, Srinivasan played a big role in getting Chandrasekaran reappointed, a move now questioned by Tata Trusts.
As governance expert Amit Tandon puts it, Amit Tandon, founder and managing director at Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS), a proxy advisory firm, says, "At the end of the day, it is the Tata board members who are the arbiters and who ascertain if these transactions were in breach of the Tata Code of Conduct. The question should be to the board of Tata Sons if they are comfortable with these transactions."
So far, both Tata Sons and Tata Trusts are staying quiet on these concerns.