Shapoor Mistry

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Shapoor Mistry and his family are shareholders in Tata Sons, a conglomerate with about $128 billion in revenue. The Mumbai-based group was worth more than $300 billion in March 2022. Shapoor’s father and family patriarch, Pallonji Mistry, died in June 2022 while his brother, Cyrus Mistry, died in a car accident in September 2022.

Mistry’s fortune is derived from closely held Tata Sons, a Mumbai-based holding company that controls more than a dozen publicly traded companies in India. Tata companies has revenue of $128 billion in the year to March 31, 2022 and were worth $311 billion at the time, according to the company’s website.

Shapoor Mistry and family are credited with 18.4% of Tata Sons after his father, Pallonji Mistry, passed away in June 2022, and younger brother, Cyrus Mistry, died in a car accident two months later. Stakes previously held by Cyrus’s family are included here because succession arrangements were unclear following his sudden death.

The Mistrys control stakes in Tata Sons through Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investment Corporation, according to company filings.

The companies are known collectively as the Tata Group. Stakes in each publicly traded asset are detailed in their respective asset notes.

Closely held Shapoorji Pallonji had revenue of around $5.5 billion in the year ended March 2020, according to Orbis financial database. Shapoorji Pallonji is valued based on its net book value as of March 31, 2020.

Gautam Ramchandani, a Mumbai-based spokesman at Shapoorji Pallonji Group, declined to comment on the billionaire’s net worth.

Biography

Education: Richmond-Upon-Thames College

The Mistry family business was founded in India in 1865, when Shapoor Mistry’s great-grandfather started a construction business with an Englishman. The initial project was Mumbai’s first reservoir near Malabar Hill. The elder Mistry has been doing business with the Tata Group since the 1920s. Both the Tata and Mistry families are Zoroastrians whose ancestors fled Persia to India to escape religious persecution.

The business expanded by undertaking big construction projects that included such Mumbai landmarks as the Reserve Bank of India, The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers, and the Oberoi Hotel.

His grandfather added to his ownership in Tata Sons by buying stakes from Tata family members over the years, a spree that enabled Mistry to become the largest individual shareholder with a stake currently exceeding 18 percent. During the same time span, the Tata family business portfolio expanded to more than 100 companies, including well-known brand names such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus Steel.

In Indian newspaper reports, Shapoor’s father, Pallonji Mistry, was often called the Phantom of Bombay House, in reference to Tata’s corporate headquarters in Mumbai, his stature as its largest shareholder and his quiet demeanor. An example of his influence occurred in 2011, when Mistry’s son, Cyrus, was named to succeed Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata, the first time in 74 years that a non-Tata would lead the conglomerate. Cyrus was abruptly ousted from his role in October 2016 in a rare display of discord atop India’s biggest group.

Pallonji Mistry named Shapoor chairman of Shapoorji Pallonji Group in June 2012.

On June 28, 2022 it was reported that Pallonji Mistry had died in Mumbai at the age of 93. In September 2022 Shapoor’s younger brother, Cyrus, died in car accident at the age of 54.

Milestones

• 1887 Littlewood Pallonji & Co. helps to build Malabar Hill Reservoir in Mumbai.
• 1947 Shapoor’s father, Pallonji Mistry, joins the company.
• 2012 Shapoor is named chairman of Shapoorji Pallonji Group.
• 2017 Shapoorji Pallonji Group builds Asia’s largest Chenani-Nashri tunnel.