The 106-year-old giant faces the toughest challenges of its existence. Can Cyrus Mistry hammer it back into shape?
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare
“It was a bad start,” says Leahy. And he blames Kirby Adams. (Adams, once MD of BlueScope Steel, was chosen by B Muthuraman, then MD of Tata Steel, to replace Philippe Varin, who was exiting Corus after seeing off the acquisition.) “We had a fraught relationship with Adams,” says Leahy. “He didn’t understand how to deal with unions. It was an unmitigated disaster.” Not surprisingly, Adams left in 2010. Even as all of this was happening, a slowdown started to loom and job cuts were rising.
Cyrus Mistry knows this. He fears that delays and cost overruns might rob Tata Steel of its advantages. Late last year, Mistry was in Jamshedpur addressing senior executives of the company. He was blunt: “You guys have won all the top awards in the steel sector. But how is it that you can’t execute your project on time?” Inside Bombay House, Mistry is said to have asked probing questions in meetings on the progress of the project. Often, the level of detail that he has sought has left most of the existing leaders stumped. “It was a subtle way of telling the top team that they didn’t have enough of a pulse on the company’s most critical project,” says an insider.
Chatterjee believes operations are turning around in the continent. “Benefits from the improvement programme may not be visible right now due to adverse economic conditions. But in another two years, Tata Steel Europe would be in a much better condition,” he says.
The Russian Roulette
(This story appears in the 19 April, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)