Air India Weighs a Singapore Airlines Executive as CFO

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Air India is looking at a finance chief drawn from its minority investor, Singapore Airlines. The talks come while the Tata-owned carrier's losses have more than doubled and questions grow about the scale of shareholder support.

A CFO from the investor's ranks

Air India's management has held preliminary discussions about the appointment. Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran and Air India chief executive Tewolde Gebremariam are understood to support the idea, according to an executive privy to the development.

Any appointment still needs the approval of the board-appointed nomination and remuneration committee. It has three members: Chandrasekaran and two independent directors, Alice Vaidyan and P. R. Ramesh.

Who the Singapore Airlines executive is, and when that person would take over from CFO Sanjay Sharma, has not been established. Sharma joined in June 2024 from Tata Projects, where he was also CFO. Emails to Air India and Singapore Airlines on 27 October went unanswered.

Losses behind the move

Air India Group posted a consolidated net loss of ₹22,238 crore in fiscal 2026. A year earlier the figure was ₹10,859 crore. The airline still needs substantial capital for operations, fleet expansion and its transformation, which raises questions about how far shareholders will keep funding it.

Tata Sons approved an infusion of ₹10,000 crore in July, according to a second executive familiar with the matter.

Singapore Airlines holds 25.1% of Air India, which Tata Group has controlled since January 2022. Its own full-year net profit for fiscal 2026 fell 57% to S$1.184 billion from S$2.778 billion. Two things drove that: the lack of last year's one-off Vistara merger gains and heavy accounting losses on the Air India holding, which cost S$945.2 million.

Singapore's government said in September that Air India's losses do not automatically become liabilities for Singapore Airlines. It added that the airline would decide whether to provide more capital.

A growing Singaporean footprint

Singapore Airlines already has people inside. Its chief executive, Goh Choon Phong, sits on Air India's board. Chief operating officer Basil Kwauk and head of engineering and maintenance Jeremy Yew Jin Kit are on the 10-member executive leadership team. Those are technical and operational roles. A CFO would reach into financial management.

The timing overlaps with a change at the top. Gebremariam replaced Campbell Wilson, who resigned this year before finishing his five-year stint.

Sean Mendis, a Malawi-based aviation consultant, reads the talks as pressure from the investor. “They would definitely want to have closer visibility or even some control of the process now rather than just signing blank checks,” he said.

Chandrasekaran said in July that the turnaround could take up to a decade.

Our View

Nothing is decided. The nomination committee has to approve the name, and Chandrasekaran sits on it, so his support matters more than the other signals reported so far. The open question is what a Singapore-appointed CFO would own in practice: reporting lines, capital requests to shareholders, or both. —

Source: Mint