After making a successful bid of $2.4-billion, including equity and debt, for Air India, Tata Sons will resume control of the airline.
Air India, which was nationalized in 1953, has been costing Indian taxpayers an average of close to $3-million a day for the past decade.
Talace Pvt Ltd., a unit of Tata Sons—the holding company for the Tata conglomerate that owns luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover—will acquire 100 per cent of Air India.
The deal, which is expected to be finalized by the end of 2021, has been achieved with the blessing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and the sale appears to be the precursor to several state-run firms being sold to provide the government’s coffers with added funding.
The sale of Air India to Tata Sons puts the airline back into the hands of the group which founded it in 1932.
