SMU conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Business on Tata Group chairman emeritus Mr Ratan Tata on Monday to honour his excellent performance in the business world and his contributions to charity. SMU Board of Trustees Chairman Mr Ho Kwon Ping said that the Tata Group’s key principles like ethics, governance and corporate social responsibility and its core value of placing the public at the centre of its operations and planning are values and ideals that SMU shares and identifies with. Over the past nine years, close to 100 SMU students have interned at Tata Group’s companies located locally and overseas. SMU and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have also jointly set up the SMU-TCS iCity Lab that specialises in research on cloud-based IT solutions. SMU now plans to set up a societal leadership research institute, and Mr Tata has agreed to be the chairman of this institute.