Tata Sons sends legal notice to Mistry for breach of confidentiality

Tata Sons Ltd has sent a legal notice to Cyrus Mistry alleging the ousted chairman breached confidentiality pacts when he submitted a petition in the National Company Law Tribunal challenging his sacking.

The legal notice, sent through law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, said Mistry’s petition included confidential data, business strategies, financial data pertaining to the business affairs of Tata Sons, Tata Group companies and joint ventures.

Mistry had approached the tribunal last week, accusing the Tata Sons board of oppressing minority shareholders and mismanaging the company.

“Clearly, you (Cyrus Mistry) have been entrusted with confidential & sensitive information, which is in the nature of property, in your capacity as director, and you have deliberately used such confidential & sensitive information in violation of law to cause wrongful loss to our client and the Tata Group Companies,” said the two page notice. “Thereby, your action and omissions have resulted in a criminal breach of trust.”

The notice further stated, “Such reckless failure on your (Mistry’s) part in discharging your fiduciary, legal and contractual duties has caused irreparable harm and damage to Tata Sons and the Tata Group and our client intends to exercise all legal rights and pursue all remedies available under applicable law to our client in relation to breach on your part.”  

The petition came a day after he resigned from six listed companies of the $100-billion conglomerate. Tata Sons had sacked Mistry on 24 October. 

On Tuesday, Shuva Mandal, Partner at law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, sent an email to Mistry alleging that, “While acting through the petitioner (Cyrus Investments as well as Sterling Investments), you (Mr Mistry) may be agitating legal issues against Tata Sons and wanted to rely on certain documents, you acted in complete breach of all legal duties and obligations that you are subject to, when you caused the petitioners to deliberately annex entire minutes of meetings of the board of directors of Tata Sons, without making any efforts to instructing petitioners to redact portions of the minutes of the meetings of the Board of Directors of Tata Sons which have no relevance or are wholly unrelated to the matters asserted in the petition.”

“Tata Sons does not wish to comment,” said a company spokesperson in an email response to a VCCircle query. While, an email query to Cyrus Mistry remained unanswered.

Cautioning Mistry, the Tata Sons notice further said that, “Your actions and omissions have exposed Tata Sons to potential claims from third parties for breach of confidentiality and our client has every intention to make you liable for all such claims.”

Tata Sons has demanded cease and desist from sharing any confidential and sensitive information accessed by Mistry in his capacity as the director of Tata Sons.  

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