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Tata official left suicide note, Thai police say
Briton jumped from Bangkok Hotel during gathering of company board
Gulf News Report
January 27, 2014
Image Credit: EPA
Dubai: A top executive of India’s Tata Motors who plunged from the 22nd floor of an upscale Bangkok hotel left an apparent suicide note, Thai police said on Monday.
Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, 51, died early on Sunday at the Shangri-La Hotel in the Thai capital where he was attending a board meeting, the company has confirmed.
“Initially, we can only assume that he committed suicide”, Thai Police Lieutenant Somyot Boonnakaew said. “The window was small and he had to try hard to get through it.”
The apparent suicide letter, found at the scene, has been sent for analysis to confirm it was written by Slym, he said.
Police believe his wife, Sally, was in the room at the time of his death but said she was too “shocked” to answer questions on Monday.
“She still cannot accept what has happened,” said Somyot, adding the executive’s body was with forensic scientists.
Slym’s body was found by staff on a fourth floor balcony at the five-star Dh800-a-night hotel, which said the “circumstances of the accident are under review by authorities.”
On Sunday the carmaker said he had died in a fall, while Indian press reports said Slym may have lost his balance and plunged to his death.
The Briton had been Tata’s managing director since joining the country’s leading car making group in 2012.
In November Tata Motors, part of the giant steel-to-software Tata Group, said its quarterly net profit surged by 71 per cent on the back of booming sales of its British luxury marque Jaguar Land Rover.
Slym had led Tata’s operations in India and international markets, excluding the Jaguar and Land Rover businesses and had recently finalised a plan to shed hundreds of jobs across the chain.
At midday trading in Mumbai, the stock was down 4.32 per cent. Explaining the stock drop, an analyst in Mumbai said the death of the Stanford University graduate could raise fears over the “timeline for new projects.”
“In addition, the market is down today in general. So the stock is getting hammered,” said an analyst who did not wish to be named.
Slym had previously been executive vice-president of SGMW Motors, China, a General Motors joint venture, and been president of General Motors in India.
In a statement late Sunday Tata chairman Cyrus P. Mistry paid tribute to “valued colleague” Slym.
Tata Motors fell 5.4 per cent, headed for its biggest decline in a year. For India’s biggest automaker by revenue, Slym’s death creates a leadership vacuum at the maker of the Dh10,000 Nano car at a time when the country’s passenger-vehicle industry is bracing for its first fiscal year of declines in more than a decade.
Slym, who joined Tata Motors after a 17-year career at General Motors Co, sought to spur demand for the Nano, once marketed as the world’s cheapest car, by repositioning it as a second vehicle.
Ralf Speth heads the bigger and more profitable Jaguar Land Rover operations, which Tata Motors bought from Ford Motor Co in 2008 for more than $2 billion.
“Karl was beginning to make long-term changes at Tata Motors,” Vikas Sehgal, managing director for the automotive sector at Rothschild & Sons in London, said in a telephone interview. “His loss will be felt deeply by Tata Motors.”
Minari Shah, a Tata Motors spokeswoman, told Gulf News: “Karl Slym joined Tata Motors in October 2012, and was providing leadership to the company through a challenging market environment. The company shares in the grief of Karl Slym’s wife and family at their irreparable loss”.
Slym’s room has no balcony and has a wide window that has views of the Chao Phraya river, and a small window next to it, which can be opened to let in fresh air, Somyot said. Slym may have fallen from the smaller window, he said.
“It would be difficult to force him out of such a small window,” Somyot said.
Studying all the evidence will probably take about two weeks, Somyot said. Pornchai Suteerakune, commander at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, told reporters today that Slym died from his fall yesterday.
Tata official left suicide note, Thai police say | GulfNews.com
The slowdown of Indian economy had proved problematic for TATA, which has suffered sharply falling sales across its range of inexpensive hatchbacks, trucks and buses, as it struggled to refresh its product range and recover from the high profile failure of its ultra-cheap Nano model.
Except for the surging sales of Land Rovers theres has been no good news for Tata in recent times.
Though Tata Nano does have a fan in Hamid Karzai. "Tata Motors should make Afghanistan a priority"according to the Afghan president.
“Tata would do very well with the Nano, its motorbikes, and other brands,” he said last month during a visit to Pune
Btw Slym was euphoric about the rave reviews Nano twist got.
Briton jumped from Bangkok Hotel during gathering of company board
Gulf News Report
January 27, 2014
Image Credit: EPA
Dubai: A top executive of India’s Tata Motors who plunged from the 22nd floor of an upscale Bangkok hotel left an apparent suicide note, Thai police said on Monday.
Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, 51, died early on Sunday at the Shangri-La Hotel in the Thai capital where he was attending a board meeting, the company has confirmed.
“Initially, we can only assume that he committed suicide”, Thai Police Lieutenant Somyot Boonnakaew said. “The window was small and he had to try hard to get through it.”
The apparent suicide letter, found at the scene, has been sent for analysis to confirm it was written by Slym, he said.
Police believe his wife, Sally, was in the room at the time of his death but said she was too “shocked” to answer questions on Monday.
“She still cannot accept what has happened,” said Somyot, adding the executive’s body was with forensic scientists.
Slym’s body was found by staff on a fourth floor balcony at the five-star Dh800-a-night hotel, which said the “circumstances of the accident are under review by authorities.”
On Sunday the carmaker said he had died in a fall, while Indian press reports said Slym may have lost his balance and plunged to his death.
The Briton had been Tata’s managing director since joining the country’s leading car making group in 2012.
In November Tata Motors, part of the giant steel-to-software Tata Group, said its quarterly net profit surged by 71 per cent on the back of booming sales of its British luxury marque Jaguar Land Rover.
Slym had led Tata’s operations in India and international markets, excluding the Jaguar and Land Rover businesses and had recently finalised a plan to shed hundreds of jobs across the chain.
At midday trading in Mumbai, the stock was down 4.32 per cent. Explaining the stock drop, an analyst in Mumbai said the death of the Stanford University graduate could raise fears over the “timeline for new projects.”
“In addition, the market is down today in general. So the stock is getting hammered,” said an analyst who did not wish to be named.
Slym had previously been executive vice-president of SGMW Motors, China, a General Motors joint venture, and been president of General Motors in India.
In a statement late Sunday Tata chairman Cyrus P. Mistry paid tribute to “valued colleague” Slym.
Tata Motors fell 5.4 per cent, headed for its biggest decline in a year. For India’s biggest automaker by revenue, Slym’s death creates a leadership vacuum at the maker of the Dh10,000 Nano car at a time when the country’s passenger-vehicle industry is bracing for its first fiscal year of declines in more than a decade.
Slym, who joined Tata Motors after a 17-year career at General Motors Co, sought to spur demand for the Nano, once marketed as the world’s cheapest car, by repositioning it as a second vehicle.
Ralf Speth heads the bigger and more profitable Jaguar Land Rover operations, which Tata Motors bought from Ford Motor Co in 2008 for more than $2 billion.
“Karl was beginning to make long-term changes at Tata Motors,” Vikas Sehgal, managing director for the automotive sector at Rothschild & Sons in London, said in a telephone interview. “His loss will be felt deeply by Tata Motors.”
Minari Shah, a Tata Motors spokeswoman, told Gulf News: “Karl Slym joined Tata Motors in October 2012, and was providing leadership to the company through a challenging market environment. The company shares in the grief of Karl Slym’s wife and family at their irreparable loss”.
Slym’s room has no balcony and has a wide window that has views of the Chao Phraya river, and a small window next to it, which can be opened to let in fresh air, Somyot said. Slym may have fallen from the smaller window, he said.
“It would be difficult to force him out of such a small window,” Somyot said.
Studying all the evidence will probably take about two weeks, Somyot said. Pornchai Suteerakune, commander at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, told reporters today that Slym died from his fall yesterday.
Tata official left suicide note, Thai police say | GulfNews.com
The slowdown of Indian economy had proved problematic for TATA, which has suffered sharply falling sales across its range of inexpensive hatchbacks, trucks and buses, as it struggled to refresh its product range and recover from the high profile failure of its ultra-cheap Nano model.
Except for the surging sales of Land Rovers theres has been no good news for Tata in recent times.
Though Tata Nano does have a fan in Hamid Karzai. "Tata Motors should make Afghanistan a priority"according to the Afghan president.
“Tata would do very well with the Nano, its motorbikes, and other brands,” he said last month during a visit to Pune
Btw Slym was euphoric about the rave reviews Nano twist got.
