BS People: Peter Unsworth

Untimely exit

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His departure had been kept under wraps till the very end. The Rs 5,982-crore Tata Global Beverages (TBG) chose to reveal that its 52-year-old CEO Peter Unsworth had put in his papers on the day it announced its full-year results for 2010-11. Clearly, the attempt was to minimise the impact the news could have on the stock price. But the TGB stock did take a beating.

Unsworth will be with TGB till June 30. His departure brings his long innings with the company to an end. Unsworth, who has studied maths and phsyics at Britain’s Nottingham University, had joined the Tetley group as a director for finance and IT in 1996. By 2000, Tetley, the largest tea company in the UK, was taken over by the Tata Group for £271 million. He rose through the ranks steadily thereafter to become Tetley’s managing director for supply and support in 2002, then COO in 2007 and eventually CEO in 2008. He took over as CEO of TGB (then Tata Tea Ltd) in June 2009.