Noel Tata retires as chairman of Trent and Voltas on 11 November under the Tata group's retirement rule

The filing is a Regulation 30 disclosure under the SEBI listing regulations, read with the SEBI master circular of 30 January 2026, signed by company secretary Krupa Anandpara and also posted on the company's website. It records the board meeting as running from 12.15 pm to 3.45 pm on 29 October 2026 and sets out four decisions, which the table below summarises with the two new director appointments.

The board said Mr Tata has been associated with the company since 1997 and placed on record its gratitude for his contribution over the past 29 years. It credited his leadership and strategic direction for what it called significant milestones, a stronger market position and sustained growth for stakeholders.

The filing gives Mr Vakil's change as a change in designation, and says he is not related to any other director. It describes the Chairman Emeritus appointment as a recognition of Mr Tata's substantial and valuable contribution to the company, and it does not describe the powers, pay or term of the role.

The two new directors

Trent attached profiles of the incoming directors. The two are classed differently. Mr Dube is appointed as a non-independent director, even though he serves as an independent director on other boards, while Ms Merchant is appointed an independent director for a single three-year term. Rajiv Dube has more than 40 years of experience across two conglomerates, Tata and Aditya Birla. An engineer with a postgraduate degree in business management, he began on the shop floor of Tata Motors and rose to president of its car business, then spent nearly nine years as an executive director on the Aditya Birla group board. He now serves as an independent director on other boards and is a professor of practice at the Deakin Business School in Melbourne.

Kalpana Merchant has more than 45 years in law, with experience in commercial property, infrastructure, project finance, banking, dispute resolution, capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. She has been a partner at Kanga and Co, AZB and Partners and Jerome Merchant and Partners, and is a qualified solicitor.

Neither appointment is final until shareholders approve it, as the filing states. For both, the company disclosed that they are not related to any other director and are not debarred from holding the office of director by any order of the securities regulator or any other authority.

The same date at Voltas

Voltas shares the date. Its board met on 6 November and decided that Mr Tata retires as chairman and director on 11 November and becomes Chairman Emeritus from 12 November, with Sunil D'Souza taking the chair from that day. Voltas is a listed company, so the decision is also a disclosure to the exchanges.

What the two companies share is the timing. The Tata group's guidelines, as Trent describes them, set a retirement point for directors, and Mr Tata's departure on 11 November applies it to the boards on which he served as chairman. The sequence at Trent is fixed. Mr Tata's last day as chairman is 11 November. On 12 November, Mr Vakil takes the chair and Mr Tata moves to the emeritus title. The filing does not say whether Mr Tata keeps any seat on the board; it describes his retirement from the office of chairman and director and his appointment as Chairman Emeritus, which is a separate honorary position.

For shareholders, the two things to watch are the approvals for Mr Dube and Ms Merchant, which the filing makes subject to a shareholder vote, and any further disclosures from Trent and Voltas about the committees the new directors will join. The companies will have to file any such change under the same listing rules.