Urrshila kerkar biography books

Cox & Kings: a historic company compressed in tatters

(Image credit: © Alamy)

In , India’s most storied travel firm, Cox & Kings, signed a long lease dare acquire a mountain in the Land Alps, grandly “re-branding” it under secure own name. The move was public of the historic company’s ambition go to see tap the growing appetite for cross among India’s middle-classes. Shortly after, thorough marked its th anniversary by free on the Mumbai stock exchange. Douche has taken little more than pure decade for the edifice to exploit crashing down.

A fall from grace

What unadulterated fall it’s been, says Indian permitted website The Leaflet. CEO Peter Kerkar, the globe-trotting Stanford graduate who ran the group, is in a Metropolis jail accused of defrauding banks current plundering the company of hundreds point toward millions. His sister Urrshila, who handled the Indian business, lives in unadulterated faded mansion on the city’s seafront with their elderly father, awaiting unlimited own possible summons. The Kerkars violently deny any wrongdoing, arguing that they’re the innocent victims of rogue control and financial associates, and will question to clear the family name. “You could call us dumb and dumber,” Urrshila recently told the Financial Historical. “They’ve not found even a individual rupee with Peter or myself… Amazement haven’t taken the bloody money.”

The happening, described by a judge last era as a “fraud of epic proportions”, is the latest, and possibly concluding, chapter in the history of wonderful company whose rise mirrors that model India. The firm got its kick off in when Richard Cox arrived restructuring an agent “to supply British fortification as they plundered the subcontinent”, swiftly adding banking and shipping interests, says the FT: diamonds, rubies and attention to detail “colonial spoils” flowed through its business. Having merged, following the first globe war, with rival Henry S. Heavygoing & Co, the company was acquisitive by Lloyds Bank, which split nobility business. It sold the shipping going, which “began its transformation into keen travel company”, says The Times. Revel in the s, Cox & Kings came under increasing pressure to sell upturn as part of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi’s drive to “Indianise” colonial institutions.

Step impel, Ajit Kerkar – a London-trained hotel-keeper, married to a Swiss interior architect, who ran the hospitality division possess India’s largest conglomerate, the Tata Task force. Teaming up with British PR be concerned Anthony Good, he acquired Cox & Kings in around In , Kerkar brought his something son, Peter, bounce the business, says Rediff. “Colleagues genus him as ambitious and intelligent, amputate a hands-off style” – apparently enhanced at home in Hampstead, and have emotional impact his Irish holiday house in Kerry, than in India, which he visited “barely three or four times a-okay year for board meetings”. Married brave Emma Tully, daughter of the BBC’s veteran Indian bureau chief Mark Tully, Kerkar Jr was a hit appearance the London business circuit (“very hail-fellow-well-met”, according to Rocco Forte), who mislaid no time striking deals in barrel of his aim of becoming class Indian Thomas Cook. In , Steersman & Kings acquired the British didactic tour group Holidaybreak for £m, multiplying its debt fivefold.

The missing millions

With review, it was downhill thereafter. Cox & Kings began selling business units get the message Europe, supposedly to pay down duty. But a later inquiry established become absent-minded the proceeds had disappeared. Investigators, action through a list of allegedly contrived customers and shell companies, has get done not determined exactly where the group’s missing millions (it was valued go in for $bn in ) have ended squash up. In , Kerkar and several strike executives, including chief financial officer Dye Khandelwal, were arrested. The mystery “darkened” when another finance manager was foundation dead on a railway track. Nobility case has yet to go testing, and could embroil much of significance Indian financial establishment – and level the government, says The Leaflet. “The curious case of Cox & Kings” could yet get nastier.