C Sivasankaran, a businessman, has served a legal notice to Japanese telecom major NTT DoCoMo, in connection with the mismanagement of Tata Teleservices Ltd, its joint venture with the Tata group.
Sivasankaran was a shareholder in the joint venture. According to sources, he has asked for a fair treatment, by sharing the money to compensate the losses incurred by him.
Sivasankaran said he suffered a loss of about Rs 3,000 crore in terms of capital and interest. His comment came in in the backdrop of former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry’s comment that the loan Tata Capital had provided to “Siva”, under the advice of executive trustee R Venkataramanan, had turned into a non-performing asset. He said that the loan of Rs 200 crore was allowed after Sivasankaran pledged his shares in Tata Teleservices.
DoCoMo had earlier sued Tata Sons in the US and the UK courts, apart from a litigation in the Delhi High Court, for not honouring a contract signed by Ratan Tata with DoCoMo in 2009.
Under the contract, the Tatas were to buy back DoCoMo’s shares in Tata Teleservices at (at least) half the acquisition price in five years. According to reports, Tatas had to transfer $1.17 billion to the Delhi High Court registrar, as part of the case.