Chandra hire D’Souza is Voltas chair; Trent MD joins board

Bengaluru and Mumbai: Voltas Ltd on Friday named Tata Consumer Products chief executive officer Sunil D’Souza as its next chairman, replacing Noel Tata, who is stepping down going by the Tata Group’s retirement rules for non-executive directors.

The appointment puts one of Noel’s longest-held board positions in the hands of an executive hired by Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran, who chairs Tata Consumer, and is Noel's rival in a deepening leadership tussle within the group.

D’Souza, who joined the Voltas board only in May, will take charge on 12 November, a day after Noel retires. He had earned his spurs by turning around Whirlpool's Indian subsidiary.

Noel, who had joined the Voltas board in 2003, has been appointed chairman emeritus, with the board acknowledging his "distinguished leadership" and "unwavering commitment" to the company's progress.

The Voltas board has also appointed Venkatesalu Palaniswamy as an additional director in a non-executive capacity. Palaniswamy is the managing director of Trent Ltd, and has worked alongside Noel Tata to build scale at the apparel retailer.

The top-deck changes at Voltas come barely a week after Trent named longtime Noel ally Bahram Vakil as its next chairman. Two executives familiar with the matter told Mint that the appointment was made without keeping Chandrasekaran in the loop.

The appointments at Trent and Voltas offer a different picture of how the battle for influence is playing out across Tata companies. For now, the Trent leadership appears to have favoured Noel’s choice, while the Voltas appointments appear to have come through consensus, stressing continuity in the management, according an executive privy to the development.

In other developments at Voltas, Mukundan Menon C.P., the current managing director of Voltas, will also retire on 24 May 2027, after a short tenure. Mukundan, hired from Blue Star last year and seen as a ‘bridge MD’, will be replaced by Jayant Balan, a Voltas veteran who leads the company’s room air-conditioner business.

Balan will take over on 25 May for five years, subject to shareholder approval. Balan joined the Tata Group through the Tata Administrative Service in 1999 and moved to Voltas in 2001.

Earlier this year, Noel decided to leave the boards of five public Tata companies and one privately owned firm. On Thursday, he stepped down as vice-chairman of Titan Co Ltd, which has not yet named a replacement.

Tata Steel Ltd’s board meets on Saturday, followed by Tata Investment Corp Ltd. Tata International Ltd, the group’s $3.6 billion private trading business, is the sixth company he is expected to leave next week.

Each change is seen as a sign of the growing conflict between Noel and Chandrasekaran, who has the backing of the Tata Sons board, including Venu Srinivasan, the other Tata Trusts nominee on the board.

Noel’s choice to follow the group’s governance rules also raises questions about Tata Sons’ decision to let Chandrasekaran stay beyond the retirement age: the Group has set retirement at 65 for executive directors, and Chandrasekaran would be 69 by the time he finishes his third five-year term in 2032.

Tata Trusts' nominees on the board of Tata Sons do not have a retirement age and for this reason, both Noel, who turns 70, and Srinivasan, who will be 74 next month, can continue.

Varun Sood has been a business journalist writing on corporate affairs for the past 17 years. He currently oversees corporate coverage, including information technology (IT) services, aviation, auto, metals and mining, and conglomerates at Mint. He started as a reporter at Business Standard in 2005, after a short internship at the Economic and Political Weekly. Having worked across newsrooms in Delhi and Mumbai, including at DNA, the Financial Times, and the Economic Times, he is now based in Bengaluru. He is most proud of his work over the last decade at Mint, including writing about the rise and fall of some CEOs at Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, and Wipro. His first book, “Azim Premji: The Man Beyond the Billions”, was published by HarperCollins in October 2020. These days, he is spending more time reading annual reports and analysts' transcripts. Varun’s two pet peeves are access journalism and the dying art of interviews with business leaders. If you think there is something wrong inside your company or there are problems with corporate governance that you'd like to highlight, email him at varun.sood@livemint.com.

Satish John serves as the Managing Editor at Mint, bringing over 30 years of experience in business journalism. He began his career in 1996 as a reporter at the Telegraph after a brief stint in the corporate sector. During his three decades of journalism, Satish has written on almost all sectors, including conglomerates, power, metals and mining, aviation and auto. Before joining Mint in 2022 (this is his second stint with the paper after earlier working from 2008 to 2011), Satish worked at The Economic Times and DNA. At Mint, Satish oversees the corporate, banking and markets coverage. One of his key roles is to manage news reporting teams and ensure their coordination across cities. The other important role he plays is in helping the paper get big news scoops and stories. His colleagues say he is a great raconteur and always has some interesting stories about promoters and companies. These days, Satish is exploring podcasts and AI tools to better tell stories and reach a wider audience. Inside the newsroom, reporters and editors continue to ideate with Satish to better their stories.

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