The End Of The Super CEO

Larger than life CEOs are becoming history as technologies and new management equations change businesses.

- P.B. Jayakumar

RUSSI MODY had a 53-year stint at the Tata group. He was managing director for 19 years — the last nine also as chairman — at Tata Iron & Steel Company. He lorded over the Tata group for years among other satraps, including Darbari Seth, Chairman of Tata Chemicals, and Ajit Baburao Kerkar, who led Indian Hotels Company. A decade before them, Ashok Ganguly was chairman of Hindustan Lever from 1980 to 1990.

All of them were Super CEOs, but that was in the last millennium. In a young and changing India, there are just a handful of such allpowerful professional Super CEOs left. They could well be the last of the lot.