Tata #4: Mega-Acquisitions in the West

When Tata Steel tried to acquire the British steel giant, Corus, they didn’t expect a bidding war to start. But it did, with the entry of CSN from Brazil, says Shashank Shah in The Tata Group. The British panel on acquisitions and mergers didn’t want an endless bidding war to happen, so they declared “a nine-round bidding process”.

 

During the bidding process, the bidding CEO’s were in their respective countries while their lawyers were in England to submit the bids. Communication happened over the phone. Amusingly:

“On two occasions, they (Ratan Tata and his lawyer) even changed phone numbers to ensure total secrecy.”

 

Tata Steel won eventually and acquired Corus.

“Nearly a century ago, Jamsetji Tata had requested Lord George Hamilton, then Secretary of State in British India, for the government’s cooperation in starting India’s first steelworks. A 100 years later, in the centennial year of Tata Steel, it acquired one of the largest steel companies in England.”

~~

With the launch of Indica, Tata Motors entered the personal vehicle market. Once the hype had died down, complaints started pouring in. Some were mistakes in the design, others were traced to bought-out parts. The Tata brand, associated with high quality, was taking a beating.

 

At this point, Ford showed interest in buying the car business. But the trip to Detroit was humiliating. Or maybe it was a negotiation tactic by Ford:

“Why did you start the passenger car division at all when you do not know anything? We will do you a favour by buying your car division.”

Ratan Tata stormed out.

 

In 2007, Ford announced its plan to sell off its prestigious brands – Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR). Tata Motors was interested – building a market in the West for an Indian company was going to be very hard; buying seemed a better option. The 1 lakh rupee car company had bought the top luxury brands! Though Ratan Tata never said so, it must have felt sweet to turn the tables.

~~

Indian newspapers had a field day with such acquisitions. “The Empire Strikes Back”. “Jaguar is now an Indian Beast”. “Tatas Rule Britannia”.

~~

Those may have been juicy soundbites and catchy headlines, but as Shah writes:

“The Tatas effectively projected an image of a professionally run conglomerate, independent of nationalistic overtones. The group ran acquired companies on sound principles rather than prejudiced patriotism.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more