While Tata comes across as a polite, aristocratic negotiator, he's capable of being tough and relentless. He's been chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, since 1991. He is also chairman of the major Tata companies, including Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Power, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels, Tata Teleservices, and Tata AutoComp. During his tenure, Tata Group's revenues have grown more than sixfold, to $22 billion.

Another factor spurring the firm's growth is its rivalry with India's other big luxury-hotel chain, the Oberoi Group. In addition to such acclaimed properties as Amar Vilas and Raj Vilas, in India, Oberoi has hotels throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Now Oberoi wants to establish itself in the United States, and Tata wants to outmaneuver Oberoi's aging but still energetic chairman, the family patriarch, Biki Oberoi.

Oberoi faces a formidable competitor in Tata, not least because Tata's organization—unlike Oberoi's—encompasses sectors beyond hotels and hospitality. In April, for instance, Tata completed its $11 billion acquisition of Corus Steel, making it the world's fifth-largest producer of steel products.

Indian Hotels and its subsidiaries, collectively known as Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, owns 59 hotels in 40 locations across India, as well as an additional 17 hotels in the Maldives, Mauritius, Malaysia, Britain, the U.S., Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia.

The company bought decaying palaces from India's maharajas and transformed them into luxury hotels. In cooperation with the Indian government, the Taj developed resorts and retreats while the government built roads and railways to access them.

The Tata Group also pioneered the concept of high-end beach hotels in India. In 1974, the Taj opened India's first such property, Fort Aguada Beach Resort; located in Goa, it is one of South Asia's most popular beach resorts.

Now Tata's focus has shifted beyond India. In the U.S., for example, the organization has bought the Pierre, the landmark hotel on New York's Fifth Avenue; the Ritz-Carlton in Boston (and renamed it the Taj Boston); and Campton Place Hotel, in San Francisco.

Buying Orient-Express would accelerate Tata's expansion abroad. "The possible combination of the two brands will create a powerful competitive advantage," said R.K. Krishna Kumar, vice chairman of Tata Sons and the day-to-day chief of the conglomerate's hotel business. "The synergies which can be developed will strongly leverage the huge opportunity in the global market and also the exploding Indian-hospitality industry. We are committed to working together in a friendly and supportive manner with Orient-Express Hotels."

"Friendly and supportive" are key, because Tata could use Orient-Express' executive talent as much as its hotels. Ratan Tata has purged his management's ranks of the people who served under his distant cousin J.R.D. Tata, who was chairman before him and the creator of the modern Tata Group.

Gone are Ajit Kerkar, who directed the hotel unit's first tentative steps into foreign expansion in the 1970s and guided Kerkar's heir apparent, Leonard Menezes; Sam Bhadha, a Menezes protégé; and Ravi Dubey, who was largely responsible for the success of Tata's Taj Mansingh Hotel, in New Delhi.

Ratan Tata, a graduate of Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, is now assembling a new team of managers, including non-Indians recruited in the United States and Britain. Adding Orient-Express managers to his roster, as well as acquiring its hotels, would make Tata's job easier.