Ratan Tata is Asia's businessmen of the year: Forbes
Mid-Day — January 4, 2005

He may not figure in the list of 40 richest Indians that Forbes compiled late in 2004, but Ratan Tata, chairman of the $14.3 billion Tata group, has been named Asia’s businessman of the year by the widely read international magazine. Though 75-year-old Pallonji Mistry, the largest individual shareholder in Tata Sons — the holding company of the group, was ranked fifth in the list of richest Indians, Ratan Tata was a notable absentee from that rich list.

The 67-year-old Tata, who was appointed as group chairman in 1991, has engineered ‘one of India’s most storied and stodgy conglomerates into a global business player’, says Forbes. Tata, who is also chairman of two of the largest private sector promoted philanthropic trusts in India, manages an empire of 90 companies in businesses as diverse as cars, steel, hotels, tea, chemicals and software.

A board member of the RBI and the PM’s Council on trade and industry, Tata has doubled group revenues over the past decade. Tata, who owns just 0.8 per cent of the stake in the group’s holding company, has succeeded by making shock therapy the group norm, says Forbes. Tata Steel the flagship of the group is now shopping for plants in Iran and Ukraine after gobbling Singapore’s NatSteel.

Tata, who is also on the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation and the program board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations India AIDS initiative, plans to spend more time pursuing his twin hobbies of flying planes and helicopters post retirement from his executive position at the age of 70. A member of the International advisory boards of:

Mitsubishi Corporation, American International Group, JP Morgan Chase, Booz-Allen Hamilton Inc amongst others, Tata designed his Mumbai beach house and dreams of starting a ‘small product-design’ firm once he steps down as Tata group chairman.

Tata an architect from Cornell University-USA retains an interest in drafting designs having sketched a new trunk of one of Tata Motors cars of late, says the magazine.