Word: steels
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...firm's culture. He raised the conglomerate's stake in all its companies to a minimum 26%. And he ordered each to meet performance targets to be first or second in its industry, and to meet quantified goals for leadership and innovation or be sold. Most shaped up. Tata Steel, for example, shed half its 78,000 workers between 1994 and 2005 using retirement and voluntary redundancies to lower costs and boost productivity. "The Tata group's relationship with its employees changed from the patriarchal to the practical," reads the Tata Code of Honor, which sets group-wide standards...
...prominence for the emerging Asia conglomerate in 2000 when the most Indian of brands bought one of the most English, Tetley Tea. At $435 million, the deal was the biggest in Indian history, and it presaged a wave of international expansion by Indian and Chinese businesses like Mittal Steel and Lenovo. For Tata, entering the West was not an end in itself. Buying Tetley was simply a way to grow Tata Tea. "We look for the acquisition of companies that fill a product gap or have a strategic connection with what we do, wherever that company might be," says Tata...
...Parsi trader from Bombay, group founder Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata knew how to turn a profit. But J.N. also had a patrician vision of spreading wealth and lifting a nation. In a 1902 letter to his son about building a workers' city around his Tata Steel works, he deplored the squalor of industrial England and anticipated what would become a standard for urban planning: "Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens." After his death in 1904, the city took...
...That same desire to market to, and invest in, some of the world's poorest countries is behind Tata's affinity for Bangladesh and Africa. Tata group recently finalized a $3 billion power, steel and coal deal in Bangladesh, the biggest investment in that country's history. In South Africa, the group has investments in mining, tourism and engine manufacturing. There is an instant-coffee plant in Uganda, a bus factory in Senegal and a phosphate plant in Morocco. "We look at countries where we can play a role in development," says Tata. "Our hope in each is to create...
...well as good karma: "We are not in anything for charity." And lest this all sounds too good to be true, the group is not free from controversy. In 2001, Tata Finance sacked its managing director and five other senior managers over alleged financial irregularities. In January, Tata Steel's plans to build a mill in the eastern state of Orissa went tragically awry when police fired on protesters who were accusing the state government acting as a broker in the development of making profits on the sale of their land. Twelve were killed. But to shed 40,000 employees...