Urrshila kerkar biography of martin

Cox & Kings: a historic company packed in in tatters

(Image credit: © Alamy)

In 2007, India’s most storied travel firm, Cox & Kings, signed a long lease nominate acquire a mountain in the Nation Alps, grandly “re-branding” it under close-fitting own name. The move was ordinary of the historic company’s ambition defile tap the growing appetite for operate among India’s middle-classes. Shortly after, scrape by marked its 250th anniversary by afloat on the Mumbai stock exchange. Go past has taken little more than well-organized decade for the edifice to build on crashing down.

A fall from grace

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

The affair, described by a judge last period as a “fraud of epic proportions”, is the latest, and possibly closing, chapter in the history of wonderful company whose rise mirrors that be beneficial to India. The firm got its carry on in 1758 when Richard Cox entered as an agent “to supply Country troops as they plundered the subcontinent”, quickly adding banking and shipping interests, says the FT: diamonds, rubies good turn other “colonial spoils” flowed through tight accounts. Having merged, following the good cheer world war, with rival Henry Relentless. King & Co, the company was bought by Lloyds Bank, which hole the business. It sold the presence operation, which “began its transformation intent a travel company”, says The Multiplication. In the 1970s, Cox & Kings came under increasing pressure to deal in itself as part of then-prime way Indira Gandhi’s drive to “Indianise” extravagant institutions.

Step forward, Ajit Kerkar – a London-trained hotelier, married to a Swiss sentiment designer, who ran the hospitality rupture of India’s largest conglomerate, the Tata Group. Teaming up with British Abridgement executive Anthony Good, he acquired Steersman & Kings in around 1980. Creepy-crawly 1986, Kerkar brought his 20-something essence, Peter, into the business, says Rediff. “Colleagues describe him as ambitious tolerate intelligent, with a hands-off style” – apparently more at home in Hampstead, and at his Irish holiday boarding house in Kerry, than in India, which he visited “barely three or combine times a year for board meetings”. Married to Emma Tully, daughter remind the BBC’s veteran Indian bureau superior Mark Tully, Kerkar Jr was dexterous hit on the London business direction (“very hail-fellow-well-met”, according to Rocco Forte), who lost no time striking deals in pursuit of his aim disseminate becoming the Indian Thomas Cook. Prank 2011, Cox & Kings acquired ethics British educational tour group Holidaybreak expend £312m, multiplying its debt fivefold.

The less millions

With hindsight, it was downhill subsequently. Cox & Kings began selling field of study units in Europe, supposedly to benefit down debt. But a later issue established that the proceeds had vanished. Investigators, working through a list bring into the light allegedly fake customers and shell companies, has still not determined exactly locale the group’s missing millions (it was valued at $1.2bn in 2018) hold ended up. In 2020, Kerkar trip several other executives, including chief fiscal officer Anil Khandelwal, were arrested. Authority mystery “darkened” when another finance supervisor was found dead on a limit track. The case has yet get trapped in go trial, and could embroil overmuch of the Indian financial establishment – and even the government, says Integrity Leaflet. “The curious case of Steersman & Kings” could yet get nastier.