Mumbai:- Shareholders of Tata Motors have overwhelmingly voted to remove independent director Nusli Wadia from the company board, the second Tata firm to remove him in as many days.
While Tata Steel shareholders removed Wadia, Chairman of Britannia Industries, on Wednesday, an extraordinary general meeting of Tata Motors on Thursday saw 71.20 per cent votes polled going against him.
As many as 146.28 crore shares out of 205.45 crore votes polled voted in favour of a resolution brought by the company’s main promoter Tata Sons for removing Wadia, who has been accused of siding with the estranged chairman Cyrus P Mistry and rallying independent directors against Tata Sons.
Out of 293.8 crore shareholders, 205.45 crore or 69.93 per cent participated in the voting on the resolution, according to a regulatory filing by the company.
Those voting against the resolution made up for 28.80 per cent shares.
Out of the promoter group, 99.79 per cent of the 95.27 crore shares voted on the resolution. As many as 3.62 lakh or 0.04 per cent voted against the resolution. Institutional investors were almost equally split on the resolution with 50.06 per cent out of 72.93 crore such shareholders voting in favour of the resolution while 49.94 per cent voted against it.
Majority of the public shareholders, which included Mistry’s family holding as well, voted against the resolution.
60.62 per cent of 37.44 crore shareholders polled, voted against the resolution.
As per the results of the voting the company filed with the exchanges late last night after a marathon extra-ordinary general meeting (EGM), only 99.96 per cent of the promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution. This means that 0.04 per cent of the promoters shares held by Af-Taab Investment went against the motion.
Tata Chemicals and Lady Tata Memorial, which abstained from voting, together own 0.002 per cent of the total voting rights, according to the filings by Tata Motors. Similarly, about 44 per cent of the total non-promoters abstained from voting.
The Tata Power website does not offer any information about Af-Taab Investment, which is listed as the first of its close to 100 subsidiaries and was set up in 1979, while the Lady Tata Memorial Trust is one of the 14 trusts that own Tata Sons and was established by Sir Dorabji Tata in April 1932 in memory of his wife Meherbai, who succumbed leukaemia in June 1931 at the age of 51.
When contacted, a Tata Motors spokesperson said he has no comments to offer.
PTI
