CORPORATE
Tata Sons stares at listing as RBI rejects bid to deregister as NBFC
- IBJ Bureau
- Sep 13, 2026
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has rejected Tata Sons’ application to surrender its core investment company registration, according to sources.
This effectively closes the Tata Group holding company’s attempt to avoid a mandatory stock market listing.
Tata Sons had filed the application in March 2024, seeking to deregister as a non-banking financial company (NBFC).
Tata Sons and the RBI have not immediately responded to requests for comment.
The rejection means that Tata Sons will remain classified as an Upper-Layer NBFC, a category subject to enhanced regulatory requirements, including mandatory listing on stock exchanges.
The RBI had first placed Tata Sons in the upper-layer category in September 2022, triggering a three-year deadline to list.
That deadline has expired on September 30, 2025.
In an effort to exit the NBFC framework before that deadline, Tata Sons had repaid more than Rs 21,000 crore of debt in 2024 and applied to surrender its registration.
The RBI’s approval of Tata Sons’ application would have allowed it to operate as an unregulated holding company and remain privately held.
The central bank had kept the application pending through 2025 while continuing to include Tata Sons in successive lists of Upper-Layer NBFCs.
The regulatory position became harder to avoid this year after revised RBI norms, effective from June 2026, replaced the earlier scoring-based system with a simpler threshold.
Under the new framework, any NBFC with assets of Rs 1 lakh crore or more is automatically classified as an Upper-Layer NBFC.
Tata Sons’ standalone assets stood at more than Rs 2 lakh crore as of March 2026, well above the threshold.
The RBI subsequently retained Tata Sons in the upper-layer category under the new framework in August.
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