Investment banker Ankur Verma first outside recruit in Chandra's A-team

One of Chandra's priorities is to hire a group CFO to bring financials back on the rails

Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran has made his first appointment in his office by hiring Ankur Verma, former managing director, investment banking, at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Verma, who joined today in the chairman’s office at the iconic Bombay House, will work across diverse functions in the Tata group. He is a veteran of corporate planning, strategy, investment banking, and mergers and acquisitions. Verma is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and is a mechanical engineer from the Delhi College of Engineering.

With Chandra taking over as head of the $103 billion Tata group, efforts are on to reconstitute the Tata Sons core team that will coordinate with group companies and plan strategy for the group. Verma fits into the role with his experience as an investment banker.

One of Chandra’s priorities is to hire a group chief financial officer to bring Tata Sons’ financials back on the rails, say insiders.

Soon after Cyrus Mistry, the former group chairman, was ousted last October, the group executive council, his advisory team was disbanded. Madhu Kannan, who was head of business development strategy under Mistry, resigned and is now at Uber, while Nirmalya Kumar, who was heading the group strategy office, was also ousted.

At the group level, the Tata Sons management will have to take several strategic decisions and make investment calls in automobiles and telecom. M&As, which is headed by Ajit Krishnakumar, son of Tata group veteran R K Krishna Kumar, too, will be important. In 2015-16, Tata Sons had deferred investments by 50 per cent to just Rs 6,300 crore as a commodity crash affected global sentiment. There were no big investments by Tata Sons in 2016-17 apart from Tata Power’s acquisition of Welspun’s renewable power business for Rs 10,000 crore.

The group may look at a merger opportunity for its telecom business, a laggard in a highly competitive industry. After Tata Sons buys back its former partner, NTT Docomo’s stake in Tata Teleservices, the group is expected to initiate talks with rivals for a merger.

The group is also in talks to merge Tata Steel’s European steel operations with German steel major ThyssenKrupp and negotiations are expected to speed up after the company settled its pension fund liabilities with British workers. Last week, Tata Motors and German automobile maker Volkswagen announced a partnership for joint development of products from 2019.