 "Chairman of Piramal Healthcare Ltd. Ajay Piramal gestures as he speaks during a news conference in Mumbai")
Industrialist Ajay Piramal will now head the UK-India CEO Forum, replacing former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry, it is learnt. The forum, which will meet during UK Prime Minister Theresa May's visit from November 6 to 8, was earlier led by Mistry. The change in leadership follows Mistry's ouster as the Tata Sons chairman in a boardroom coup of sorts on October 24.
The 61-year-old Piramal was among the Tata Sons directors who voted in favour of Mistry's removal as chairman, and the appointment of Ratan Tata as the interim chairman. The Piramal group chairman, who's among the 50 richest Indians, with an estimated networth of $3.3 billion, was inducted into the Tata Sons board as a non-executive director just two months ago.
The Union government, which was busy finding Mistry's replacement at the UK-India CEO Forum, kept the new name under wraps to avoid any media controversy. There was no official confirmation on Piramal heading the CEO forum.
May, who arrives in New Delhi late on Sunday evening, will inaugurate the UK-India Tech Summit on Monday along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Through the day, the UK PM will be in the capital for multiple engagements with the government and industry. On Tuesday, she will travel to Bengaluru to meet Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and tech CEOs before leaving for London the same evening.
May will be accompanied by around 100 business delegates on her first bilateral trip outside the European Union. Some 40 CEOs of companies headquartered in the UK, including Standard Life, Barclays, Cairn, GlaxoSmithkline, are expected to participate in the CEO forum. Several small and medium enterprises, British universities too, will be represented at the summit. The total number of participants at the summit could cross 1,000.
May's visit comes exactly a year after Modi's trip to the UK. During the 2015 visit, Mistry headed the CEO Forum from the Indian side and accompanied the PM at various high-level meetings. Although Mistry continues to chair the boards of many Tata companies, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Global Beverages, Tata Steel and others, the government decided to replace him at the CEOs' forum. Bharti group's Sunil Mittal and Sun Pharma's Dilip Shanghvi are among the other members of the CEO forum.
