The Indian-born billionaire Pallonji Mistry, whose engineering empire constructed opulent hotels, stadiums, palaces, and factories throughout Asia and whose family’s epic showdown with the Tata Group sparked India’s biggest corporate feud, passed away in Mumbai. He was 93. After the story circulated on social media, a corporate official confirmed the Indian tycoon’s demise. According to its website, Mistry and his family are in charge of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, founded more than 150 years ago and currently employs more than 50,000 people in more than50 countries. The Reserve Bank of India, the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, and the blue-and-gold Al Alam palace for the Sultan of Oman are just some of its iconic projects.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mistry has a net worth of about $29 billion,
placing him among India’s and Europe’s wealthiest persons. In 2003, he gave up his Indian
citizenship and adopted Irish citizenship due to his lengthy union with Patsy Perin Dubash, a
Dubliner. To be the largest minority stakeholder in Mumbai-based Tata Sons Pvt., the primary investment holding company for India’s largest conglomerate, the family earned the majority of their fortune, or 18.5 percent, as of early 2022.
That stake turned out to be a double-edged sword for the media-shy Mistry when his son Cyrus’ abrupt removal as chairman of Tata Sons in 2016 sparked a protracted legal and boardroom struggle between two of India’s most famous corporate families.
In 2021, the nation’s highest court affirmed Tata Sons’ provisions on minority shareholder rights, making it harder to sell shares without board approval. It also decided that Cyrus’s removal from office was lawful. In early 2022, the stake was approximately $30 billion, making it illiquid.
Early Associates
When Pallonji Mistry’s grandfather established a building company with an Englishman in 1865, the family business was born. The first reservoir in Mumbai, which was once called Bombay, was the inaugural project. In the 1920s, th
the firm started working with the Tata family. Both families are Zoroastrians who left religious persecution in Persia for India in the 1700s.
Mistry was born in Mumbai on June 1st, 1929. The son started working for the family business in 1947; his father, Shapoorji Mistry, was a staff member.
In 1970, he oversaw the company’s entry into the Middle East, including Dubai, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. In 1971, it was awarded a contract to build many governmental structures, including the palace of the Sultan of Oman.
According to the 2007 book “Moguls of Real Estate” by Manoj Namburu, his father’s managerial style and drive to grow worldwide were in stark contrast to his own. His father had only twice visited overseas, both to assist family members who needed medical attention. Mistry distributed responsibility and merely kept the ability to supervise and plan, in contrast to his father. The latter maintained personal control over every last detail and required his engineers to update him daily on projects.
According to “Moguls of Real Estate,” which quoted Zafar Iqbal, a former chief executive officer of SP Group, Mistry was frequently eager to finish a building project even at a loss to safeguard the company’s reputation.
The company grew into a conglomerate that included real estate, water, energy, and financial services while he was in charge. It had access to the textile, engineering, home appliance, and shipping industries through its ownership of Forbes & Company Ltd. In addition, and it had a controlling position in Afcons Infrastructure Ltd., which constructed projects in India.
Hard Times
The business is well-known in India for creating the Mumbai World Trade Center in 1970 and
the Imperial, two 60-story residential buildings, in 2010. These projects are in addition to the
Oberoi Hotel and RBI’s headquarters in the country’s financial center. Pune, a city in western
India, also constructed the 80-acre (32-hectare) Ozone information technology park. That was a branch of a 110-acre stud farm Mistry purchased in the 1980s that continued to breed Indian Derby-winning stallions, according to Namburu’s book.
As the business established automobile factories and steel mills for the organization, the
family’s ownership of Tata Sons rose. Over the years, his father also purchased shares from
Tata’s family members. The Tata portfolio increased to more than 100 businesses
simultaneously, including household names like Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea, and Corus
Steel. Because he was seldom seen at Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata group, and due to his reserved manner and avoidance of the media, Indian media sources dubbed Mistry “the Phantom of Bombay House.” The family is normally private, and even information like the date of his and his wife’s wedding is kept from the public.
After Shapoor, his eldest son, assumed leadership of the SP Group firms in 2004, Mistry was
forced to take a backseat.
Meeting Room Coup
In 2012, Cyrus succeeded Ratan Tata as the chairman of Tata Sons. But four years later, Tata
Trusts, which owned 66 percent of Tata Sons and was under Ratan Tata’s control, organized a boardroom coup to have him ousted. Allegations of poor management and the repression of minority shareholder rights caused the disagreement to escalate. The two families had been partners for 70 years before the court decision in Tata’s favor in 2021 caused burnt bridges between them.
After leaving his position at Tata, Cyrus founded Mistry Ventures LLP, a venture capital
business. The SP Group, while having a diverse range of industries, was compelled to consider asset sales due to a cash shortage, mounting debt, and even a payment default in 2020.Its primary real estate business was impacted by the Covid-19 epidemic. A division of Reliance Industries Ltd. has agreed to buy 40% of Sterling & Wilson Solar Ltd., owned by Mistry, in October 2021. Laila and Aloo were Mistry’s two daughters in addition to his two boys. The latter wed Noel Tata, Ratan Tata’s half-brother and chairman emeritus of Tata Sons.
