The-Last-Rajah-Ratan-Tata-Case-Study
The Last Rajah
By Pete EngardioAmong Asia's business titans, Ratan N. Tata stands out for his modesty. The chairman of theTata Group —
India's biggest conglomerate, with businesses ranging from software, cars, andsteel to phone service, tea bags, and wristwatches — usually drives himself to the office in his$12,500 Tata Indigo Marina wagon. He prefers to spend weekends in solitude with his two dogsat a beachfront home he designed himself. And disdainful of pretense, he travels alone even onlong business trips, eschewing the retinues of aides who typically coddle corporate chieftains.But the 69-year-old Tata also has a daredevil streak. An avid aviator, he often flies a corporateFalcon 2000 jet around India. And in February he caused a sensation at the Aero India 2007 airshow by co-piloting Lockheed (LMT) F-16 and Boeing (BA) F-18 fighter jets.Tata's business dealings reflect the bolder side of his personality. In the past four years he hasembarked on an investment binge that is building his group from a once-stodgy regional playerinto a global heavyweight. Since 2003, Tata has bought the truck unit of South Korea's DaewooMotors, a stake in one of Indonesia's biggest coal mines, and steel mills in Singapore, Thailand,and Vietnam. It has taken over a slew of tony hotels including New York's Pierre, the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, and San Francisco's Camden Place. The 2004 purchase of Tyco International's(TYC) undersea telecom cables for $130 million, a price that in hindsight looks like a steal,turned Tata into the world's biggest carrier of international phone calls. With its $91 millionbuyout of British engineering firm Incat International, Tata Technologies now is a major supplierof outsourced industrial design for American auto and aerospace companies, with 3,300engineers in India, the U.S., and Europe.The crowning deal to date has been Tata Steel's $13 billion takeover in April of Dutch-Britishsteel giant Corus Group, a target that would have been
By Pete EngardioAmong Asia's business titans, Ratan N. Tata stands out for his modesty. The chairman of theTata Group —
India's biggest conglomerate, with businesses ranging from software, cars, andsteel to phone service, tea bags, and wristwatches — usually drives himself to the office in his$12,500 Tata Indigo Marina wagon. He prefers to spend weekends in solitude with his two dogsat a beachfront home he designed himself. And disdainful of pretense, he travels alone even onlong business trips, eschewing the retinues of aides who typically coddle corporate chieftains.But the 69-year-old Tata also has a daredevil streak. An avid aviator, he often flies a corporateFalcon 2000 jet around India. And in February he caused a sensation at the Aero India 2007 airshow by co-piloting Lockheed (LMT) F-16 and Boeing (BA) F-18 fighter jets.Tata's business dealings reflect the bolder side of his personality. In the past four years he hasembarked on an investment binge that is building his group from a once-stodgy regional playerinto a global heavyweight. Since 2003, Tata has bought the truck unit of South Korea's DaewooMotors, a stake in one of Indonesia's biggest coal mines, and steel mills in Singapore, Thailand,and Vietnam. It has taken over a slew of tony hotels including New York's Pierre, the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, and San Francisco's Camden Place. The 2004 purchase of Tyco International's(TYC) undersea telecom cables for $130 million, a price that in hindsight looks like a steal,turned Tata into the world's biggest carrier of international phone calls. With its $91 millionbuyout of British engineering firm Incat International, Tata Technologies now is a major supplierof outsourced industrial design for American auto and aerospace companies, with 3,300engineers in India, the U.S., and Europe.The crowning deal to date has been Tata Steel's $13 billion takeover in April of Dutch-Britishsteel giant Corus Group, a target that would have been