Tata #5: The Socialist Capitalists
This blog is an assorted sampling of the Tata group’s ethics. That they refuse to pay bribes is well known. A few examples from Shashank Shah’s The Tata Group . ~~ Here is what Jamsetji Tata had felt when he had visited Manchester: “What struck him the most were its industrial slums, which were as dark and sulphureous as the medieval version of hell.” It would be a sentiment that would continue way beyond Jamsetji. ~~ Tata Finance was, as the name suggests, a lending company. During the Dot Com boom, its MD started investing company money in Internet startups. This was illegal, of course. When the Internet companies collapsed in 2000, Tata Finance was in a deep soup. Technically, the Tatas weren’t liable – it was a fraudulent act by one employee. Yet Tata Sons stepped in and promised to fill in the lost funds since many of the depositors in the company were common folks: “(Contrast this with) global financial companies that filed for bankruptcy and evaded responsi...