Karl Slym

Karl Jonathon Slym(9 February 1962 – 26 January 2014) was an English businessman and the managing director ofTata Motorsfrom October 2012 until his death in 2014.Slym was born inDerby,England.Before joiningTata Motors,Slym was the executive vice president of SGMW Motors, China, and president, managing director and board member ofGeneral Motorsin India between 2007 and 2011. He was an alumnus ofStanford Universityand aSloanFellow.

Career

He studiedProduction Engineeringat the University of Derby and became an early employee ofToyotaat its factory at nearbyBurnaston,where he rose to be a general assembly manager before moving to General Motors in 1995.

For GM, Slym worked first in the former East Germany as a "lean manufacturing" adviser in theOpelfactory atEisenachinThuringia— which had previously built theWartburgsaloon, the so-called "Mercedesof the East ". From there he transferred toPolandas director of manufacturing at a new Opel plant inGliwice,and in 1999 he moved again, toCanada,to become manager of a GM plant at Oshawa inOntario.

After his MS at Stanford University inCaliforniain 2002, returned to Canada, then did a stint inSouth Koreabefore being appointed in 2007 to be general manager of GM in India, where the US giant had previously achieved only modest market penetration.

Before being headhunted by Tata Motors, Slym spent nine months as executive vice president of SGMW Motors, a GM joint venture building small commercial vehicles atLiuzhouin south westernChina.

Personal life

Slym, who was originally from Derby, met his future wife, Sally, when he crashed his car at the age of 19 and she handled his insurance claim. Sally Slym née Eames worked in theinsuranceindustry in England, heading thehuman resourcesdepartment of the AA's retail insurance division. While living abroad with her husband, she taught business English to foreign executives. They married in September 1984. The couple did not have children and celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in 2009 by visiting the Indonesian island ofLombok,where Slym, a keen scuba diver, placed a giant concrete heart in a reclaimedcoral reefto commemorate the occasion.

Karl Slym was a keen sportsman in his youth — an oarsman,rugbyplayer andgoalkeeper— and a lifelong fan of Derby County. He described himself on hisTwitterprofile as a "Britisher who just can’t stay away from India".

His elder brother Kevin died in 2008.

Death

Slym died on 26 January 2014 inBangkok,Thailand.He fell from the 22nd floor to the 4th floor of theShangri-La Hotelin Bangkok where he was to attend a meeting of Tata Motors Thailand.

According toRoyal Thai PoliceLieutenant-Colonel Somyot Boonyakaew, "he had to make an effort to get through" a "very small window" making it impossible to drop accidentally.

As of March 2014, the investigation continues.