India’s 158-year-old Tata Group wants its holding company to stay private. But since regulatory pressures are making it difficult to hold off a stock-market listing indefinitely, it can perhaps learn the virtue of simplicity from an even older conglomerate: Hong Kong’s Jardine Matheson.
Last week, the Reserve Bank of India retained Tata Sons Pvt. on its updated list of systemically important shadow lenders. All 17 firms on that list have to be publicly held — and 16 of them already are. Although Tata Sons has offered to surrender a key registration to bypass the rule and avoid an initial public offering, no decision yet on its application leaves the nerve center of the $350 billion empire with little choice except to start preparations to go public.
