Newsmaker of the year: Nusli Wadia

Earlier, Wadia has helped Ratan Tata in ousting the old guard from key Tata companies

Fighting fit
 
For decades, Nusli Wadia, 72, Chairman of the Wadia group of companies, kept a close watch on the Tata group as an independent director on the boards of Tata Chemicals, Tata Steel and Tata Motors. And that’s because J R D Tata asked him to look after the group’s interests just before he left for Europe on his last journey. In fact, J R D wanted a more binding relationship. Six months before his death in 1993, he asked Wadia to take over as group vice-chairman. Wadia refused as he did not want to come in the way of his close friend Ratan.
 
Indeed, he went further. In Ratan Tata’s early days, he advised him on his ultimately successful battle in ousting the old guard from key Tata companies. 
 
Few missed the irony when, 23 years later, it is Wadia who has been ousted from the boards of Tata group companies as an independent director by his close friend. The ostensible reason: for “harming Tata Sons interests” and “acting in concert” with Cyrus Mistry, 48.
 
In a series of letters to Tata group shareholders, Wadia criticised some of Ratan Tata’s key decisions, including expensive overseas acquisitions, during his tenure as chairman.
 
Having filed a criminal defamation suit against Tata, this very personal battle will wind its ways through the judicial system and the outcome is anybody’s guess. But this sophisticated grandson of Muhammad Ali Jinnah is a seasoned veteran of corporate brinkmanship, having started out in business battling his father for control of the Wadia group and, most recently, wresting control of Britannia from multinational food chain Danone, which exited the company in 2009 after selling its stake to Wadia after a 13-year partnership.
 
But Wadia’s reputation as a competitor was established in the eighties when he fought Dhirubhai Ambani, the petrol pump attendant-turned-corporate czar, for control of the polyester market. Wadia joined hands with  Indian Express’ maverick promoter Ramnath Goenka to attack Ambani in a series of explosive articles. The ever-realistic visionary, Ambani had taken the trouble to build clout in the bureaucracy and among politicians, making sure that the petrochemicals plants built by Wadia was delayed long enough for him to lose that battle. 
 
The Wadia-Ambani confrontation was the stuff of headlines beyond the intricacies of polyester input duties; in 1988, a former general manager of Reliance Industries was jailed on sensational charges of conspiracy to murder Wadia, a case that is still being heard in court 28 years later. 
 
So who really won? Wadia thinks he lost the business battle but won the ethical one. In a rare interview to this paper in 2012, he said: “To some extent, yes (I did miss the bus), but that’s because I chose not to manipulate the system. God has given me more than I deserve.”
 
Not that he sees himself as the provocateur but as a defender of his values. As he declared in the same interview: “I will go down fighting… but never betray the faith reposed in me.”