Chennai: Sip Tetley tea in the morning, drive a Jaguar built with Corus steel to office, work with Tata Consultancy software and over the weekend, take your Land Rover to the countryside before fine dining in a Taj hotel.
This seems to be the message of the $28.8 billion Tata group to the British people. For Tetley, Corus, Jaguar and Land Rover are UK based companies taken over by the Indian group.
The Tatas own 98 operating companies around the world with a market capitalization of $56.52 billion.
The acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover takes the overseas operating companies to 100, another landmark number.
The Tata's passage to Britain is over 100 years old through Tata Limited, a subsidiary of Tata Sons.
However, it was in the new millennium that the Tata group initiated its new phase of globalisation when it acquired the Tetley tea brand - the market leader in Britain and Canada. Tetley contributes a lion's share of the Tatas' tea business today.
The next major acquisitions came in 2005 when Tata Chemicals bought the soda ash maker Brunner Mond Group, Tata Technologies acquired INCAT International - a technology company - and TCS bought the business process outsourcing (BPO) division of Pearl Group.
The year 2007 saw Tatas acquiring British steel maker Corus, one of the largest European steel makers.
And on Wednesday the group announced the acquisition of two more iconic British brands - Jaguar and Land Rover from US's Ford Motor Company.
All these acquisitions make Britain a major overseas market for the Indian group.
At the last count the Indian group has around 20 companies in Britain and several thousand employees.
On the information technology domain, TCS has a good presence in Britain and Ireland while Tata Interactive Systems operates in the e-learning space.
Tata Motors has an engineering technology centre in Warwick while the group's hotel chain Taj has two hotels in Britain.
The telecom company VSNL International also has a presence in Britain.
Comments
0 comment