At a glittering gathering at the annual Business Standard Awards function in Mumbai on Tuesday, Tata group Chairman Ratan Tata accepted Business Standard’s CEO of the Year award. 

“All I have contributed is to continue to operate in the traditions of the group and do the right things and at the right time,” Tata said, while thanking “the thousands of Tata employees on the behalf of whom I am accepting this award”. 

At the awards function, which also marked the official announcement of the partnership of Financial Times of the UK with Business Standard, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was the chief guest, said: “The United Progressive Alliance government is committed to pushing ahead with the reforms process, and industry should give up all apprehensions on this count. We are all very lucky to have a combination of Manmohan Singh as the prime minister, P Chidambaram as the finance minister and Montek Singh Ahluwalia as the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. There should be no doubt that the government is fully committed to taking reforms forward,” he said. 

In his welcome address, Business Standard Ltd Chairman T Thomas recounted the sustained dialogue between Business Standard and Financial Times that started 11 years ago. 

The Best Car of the Year went to the new Honda City, while the Best Imported Car of the Year honour went to the Subaru Forester, a sports utility vehicle. The Honda Eterno was honoured as the Best Scooter of the Year and the Bajaj Wind 125, the best motorcycle. 

In the business category, the first award for the evening went to honour the Fund Manager of the Year, an award jointly shared by two fund managers from the Franklin Templeton fund house: R Sukumar, chief investment officer (equity) and Nilesh Shah, chief investment officer (debt). 

Shah moved to Prudential ICICI as chief investment officer earlier this month. In his acceptance speech, Shah said: “This award recognises the sweat and blood that fund managers put in. It’s the fund managers who deserve the award more than the funds.” 

The award for the Banker of the Year went to V P Shetty, chairman of the Kolkata-based UCO Bank, who steered the bank out of 11 years of losses. 

He has been credited with nursing the sick bank to health by taking initiatives to change the work culture and employee attitude in the bank. “I just followed the age-old strategy — increase income and reduce costs,” Shetty said in his acceptance speech. 

It was an apt moment for Shetty to take a swipe at all the sundry 'experts' who had recommended, among other things, that the bank follow a narrow banking approach or that it be shut immediately. 

The Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, were honoured as Billionaires of the Year. The brothers, who have a 45 per cent stake in Reliance Industries, India's largest manufacturing conglomerate, have displaced Wipro Chairman Azim Premji from the top, a perch that the latter had come to occupy since the inception of the award four years ago. First cousin and Reliance executive director Nikhil Meswani accepted the award on the brothers' behalf.