The shocking death of Cyrus P Mistry in a road accident is unlikely to have any impact on the leadership of the Pallonji empire and the flagship company SP & Co, which are overlooked by elder brother Shapoor Mistry.
However, the younger scion’s death has brought the spotlight back on the 18.4 per cent the family holds in Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group. Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry had reportedly split the ownership of the Tata Sons stake equally between Cyrus and Shapoor Mistry.
Sources close to the group said Cyrus Mistry had resigned from executive posts in the group before taking up the chairmanship of Tata Sons. After his removal from the Tata group, he floated a new venture capital firm called Mistry Ventures LLp along with Shapoor.
Their plan was to incubate new businesses, forge partnerships and make investments across sectors. After its formation, Cyrus Mistry said that the VC firm will focus on providing mentorship and help start-ups craft the appropriate business experiments needed to validate, scale and bring products and services faster to market.
The Shapoorji Pallonji group has interests ranging from engineering and construction to energy where it provides solutions for energy resources and green power, infrastructure, real estate and financial services. It has assets in power, both hydro-electricity and oil and gas, ports and terminals (onshore and offshore), transportation (rail and road) and natural resources — not only in India but also in various parts of the world. The SP Group was in the news earlier this year when it said that debt worth Rs 12,450 crore owed to nearly 22 lenders has been cleared through a one-time payment, leaving the group’s balance sheet with just Rs 3,600 crore of loans.
The Mistry group had applied for a one-time loan restructuring with a group of lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI) in mid-September 2020 when it had faced cash flow problems leading to a Rs 200-crore default on a commercial paper issued to the Union Bank of India. The group’s operations were affected by the lockdown on account of Covid-19.
While the group did not disclose how the entire funds were garnered, it said that the repayment was enabled by the Mistry family infusing over Rs 5,100 crore and the group collecting Rs 3,750 crore from monetising two of its marquee assets — Sterling Wilson Renewable Energy and Eureka Forbes. In its construction business, while Afcons has an order book in excess of Rs 30,000 crore as of end-March 2022, its real estate franchise has achieved Rs 4,000 crore of sales in the previous fiscal.
