Shares of Tata Motors slumped around 5 percent intraday on Monday. In a major setback, its managing director, Karl Slym, died on Sunday after falling from a high floor of a hotel in Bangkok.
Slym, 51, had attended a board meeting of Tata's Thailand unit in the Thai capital, a company spokeswoman said, giving no further details. A post-mortem report is due on Monday, she said.
A native of Britain, Slym was hired in 2012 to revive flagging sales and market share in the domestic business of India's biggest automaker, which is part of the Tata conglomerate.
Slym led the automaker's operations in India and international markets including South Korea, Thailand and South Africa, excluding the Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) luxury unit that it acquired in 2008.
Slym "was providing leadership to the company through a challenging market environment", the company said in a statement on Sunday.
Before joining Tata Motors, Slym was executive vice president of SGMW Motors, China, a General Motors joint venture. Before that he had headed General Motors in India. At 09:54 hrs Tata Motors was quoting at Rs 354.35, down Rs 16.15, or 4.36 percent on the BSE.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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