GAS WARS!

Krishna Godavari Basin has become the unlikely battleground for a war that had initially started between two guys who were once upon a time brothers, just as Indians and Pakistanis were, but are now sworn enemies who are not willing to give even an inch to each other, just as India and Pakistan are not. It is well known that when brothers fight, others enjoy! In this case, they are getting richer too; the lawyers legally and others, well. Of late, a few more "stakeholders", who have perhaps realised that they too can get a tiny share of the enormous pie that is at stake, have also started making the right noises.

So, to amicably settle things once and for all and put an end to this mother of all gas wars, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora invited some of those involved for cocktails. With so much to gas about and so much of gas to talk about, it was not surprising that the evening turned out to be so gaseous. At the end of it, the two warring brothers almost patched up, and Deora had to step in quickly to prevent that national catastrophe from becoming a reality!

Here are some excerpts of what transpired during that imaginary evening:

Anil Ambani: Deora ji, I am shocked that you have joined Mukesh's camp. What he has given to you is no BIG deal. Had you spoken to me, you would understood what a BIG deal really means!

Deora: Anil, you don't have any gas at all. Why are you gassing about a BIG deal? We have seen what has happened to all your BIG plans. You talk BIG and deliver small!

Anil: Mukesh has tried every trick in the book and a few out of the book too, to deny me gas. He is going to make Rs 50,000 crores and the government just Rs 500 crores. Can't you see that he's is cheating the government!

Deora: Who is not?

Laloo Yadav: Arrey Anil Bhai, we are the government. So if we cheat the government, we are cheating ourselves only na! How can that be objectionable?

Deora: Why do you think Laloo ji says that Indian Railways is a "soney ki chidiya"?

Anil: And how much "gas" has Mukesh given to the "government" that you are talking about?

Mukesh Ambani: Anil, move back a couple of feet. Did you not hear the minister say in Parliament that the so-called agreement that you are talking about to steal my gas at a dirt cheap price is not an "arm's length" agreement?

Mulayam Yadav: Mukesh, you cannot sell gas to your own brother Anil at an exorbitant price. Do you know how much of prime land I made available to him to run the Dadri power plant on that gas, when I was CM? I know what BIG means when Anil utters the word!

Mukesh: You've already got your BIG whatever. So what's your problem now?

Sitaram Yechuri: Gas is a national asset. We cannot allow two brothers to divide it privately between them.

Deora: You guys must know a lot about gas. The Lok Sabha elections proved that the communists are just that and nothing more!

Yechuri: You better not gas too much about your "victory". In the last 10 years, your vote share has not gone up at all. Soon that balloon will also be pricked and you too will run out of gas!

Deora: That is why we are hoarding for that rainy day...for seven generations actually! The gas war between these two brothers has come as a massive blessing from heaven!

Yechuri: I wish we had joined the government last time and got a few ATM ministries like yours. That Karat fellow simply refused to see the juicy carrot; he thought he was the real thing - Karat!

Mulayam Yadav: Mukesh has no choice legally but to give gas for the Dadri power plant.

Deora: As of now the plant is just gas. When your friend builds it, I will give him gas to power it.

Anil: That is not acceptable. The gas is mine. I have BIG plans to sell it at a huge profit to others till the power plant comes up.

Deora: Ah, so you want to cheat the government too!

Laloo Yadav: Arre bhai, why don't you just sell those 7000 acres of prime land and forget about the gas? You will make more money than you will by building that plant. And you will not have to pay Ram Jethmalani and Deora and others through your nose too!

Mulayam Yadav: Mayawati is CM now. Anil may be BIG but Mayawati is by far the BIGGEST. Have you seen her many statues? Even they have her carrying a handbag. He will be left with only the gas that he produces.

Laloo Yadav: I didn't know that you produce gas?

Mulayam Yadav: He does. The same type that you do!

Mukesh: You guys can keep gassing. I am the only one who has the real gas, not the stinking variety that you all are releasing!

Yechuri: This is failed capitalism at its worst. That gas is not yours, Mukesh. It is a national asset. Which means that all of us are entitled to a share of the pie.

Laloo Yadav: Me too.

Deora: KG basin gas is indeed a national asset. But so is Reliance Industries and, therefore, Mukesh himself. So he is entitled to keep all that gas and sell it to whoever he wants to at a reasonable profit.

Anil: And who determines what is a reasonable profit, and how?

Deora: We do. After a reasonable consideration of many factors including whether the "consideration" is reasonable or not!

Anil: This is not fair. I will not allow it, come what may. I am also a BIG national asset.

Mukesh: Anil, who asked you to break away? Now you are only gassing that you are BIG. Had you stayed on, you would have been BIGGER and would have had no gas problems too!

Anil: Really?

Mukesh: Of course. You can still come back.

Anil: Are you sure Bade Bhai?

Deora: No, no. Both of you cannot get back together again. That will be disastrous.

Mukesh: Why?

Deora: Have India and Pakistan gotten back?

Anil: No. Why?

Deora: Like you, Pakistan has also become BIG by breaking away...it can at least make that boast, even though it is empty like yours.

Mukesh: But by coming back, it will become BIGGER!

Deora: Indeed. But Anil, the problem is that while that may happen, it is India that will become BIGGEST, not Pakistan!

Anil: How can I allow Mukesh to beat me, no matter how much BIGGER I may become by coming back? He's trying to trap me into a subordinate position again.

Deora: Absolutely. Don't give up Anil. Keep up the pressure. Keep doing corporate Kargils. One day you will be able to do a Sharm-el-Sheikh too!

Anil: Will you also put enough pressure on Mukesh, like the Americans are on the Indians?

Deora: You bet Anil. We will. That is our job. We are behind you. You just keep fighting the gas war! (Aside) If he doesn't do that, we will be left sniffing the useless gas that we produce.
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8. The 'BIG' war between Mukesh and Anil!

THE 'BIG' WAR BETWEEN MUKESH AND ANIL!

Mukesh and Anil Ambani, sons of Dhirubhai Ambani are at war. Over the Empire, Reliance, that their father created from a scratch. And a lot more. They talk at each other through the media and haven’t talked to each other for a long time.

A couple of days back, however, someone mischievously mixed up their schedules so that they could come face to face and sort out all their messy problems as big men should. Did they? Here is how the imaginary conversation went after pleasantries had been exchanged.

Mukesh: Anil what is it that I hear about your having filed a Rs 10K crore defamation suit against me?

Anil: What else did you expect me to do? I was very disappointed when I read about your having referred to me as having been a lobbyist and spy of Reliance Industries.

Mukesh: But that’s true.

Anil: I am a BIG man. You should have called me at least the Managing Director responsible for paying BIG money to, and spying on, BIG people in the government.

Mukesh: But why on earth should I have told such a big lie?

Anil: That would have gone well with the BIG image of my group. But you’ve ruined it all. I have no choice but to set the record straight. Since real brother Amar Singh could not help me out in this matter, I had to go to court. After all it is a question of my BIG reputation.

Mukesh: What is this new BIG mantra that you have started reciting endlessly?

Anil: I am BIG.

Mukesh: C’mon, I have been seeing you since you were really small.

Anil: Bhai I have really grown since you saw me last. I am really BIG now.

Mukesh turns questioningly towards Tina(Anil’s wife)

Tina: No comments!

Mukesh: How could you have found a way to become BIG when I haven’t been able to do that despite having explored everywhere?

Nita(Mukesh’s wife): He must have hit upon a BIG secret while you were wasting all your time learning how not to say ‘like’ after every word.

Mukesh: Like which word?

Nita: See, with that new-found power Anil now wants to turn the whole of India on. Remember his macho ad ‘Power on toh India on’?(When power is turned on, so is India!)

Anil: Ho toh BIG ho!(If you have it, it has to be BIG!)

Nita: Size does matter.(sigh)

Tina: Don’t go by BIG ads, Nita. They always promise more that they deliver! (wink-wink)

Mukesh: It’s all gas. Trust me.

Nita: I know, I know. It stinks. But you still want more of that oily stuff.

Mukesh: Yes. I am going to meet 40% of India’s oil and gas requirements.

Anil: How heavily crude can you people get? If only you had learnt how to get BIG, bhai, we might still have been together.

Mukesh: Now you are talking. Why were you shouting ‘Think Bigger Think Better’ earlier and giving me a complex?

Anil: That was only a stop-gap slogan to let the whole world know that I am BIGGER than you. I actually wanted to become the BIGGEST.

Tina: Snigger

Mukesh: Stop it bhai, my BP is going up.

Anil: Relax bhai, I have realised that it takes a lot more than thinking to become BIGGER, forget BIGGEST.

Mukesh: Tell me more.

Anil: Even though on paper one might look biggest, there are always many bigger guys in the market who can bring you back in touch with reality in a jiffy. Look at how much I have shrunk. The power seems to have gone too!

Mukesh: I always knew it would happen to you one day. You should have listened to papa like I did and stuck to small basics.

Anil: But still I am BIG. Today I have BIG Adda, BIG TV, BIG Entertainment, BIG Cinema, BIG B...

Mukesh: Cut it Anil. We both have Ma. Despite the BIG ‘Deewar’ between us.

Anil: Shit!

Mukesh: Besides, I may not be BIG but deep I do dig.

Anil: Yes I know you can gas about that. But give me my share of gas. Without it I’m powerless!

Mukesh: I always knew that you are going to gas around that you are BIG and powerful, just to make me feel really small. That is why I am holding the gas back.

Nita: Don’t release it here, for God’s sake.

Anil: Is that also why you have humiliated me by making such small allegations against me?

Mukesh: You got it BIG man! Now go do what you want.

Anil: Mummyyyyy!

(To be continued....)
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Readers may also read: Anil Ambani pays or returns Rs 5000 crores to shareholders?

IS PETROL REALLY THAT OVERPRICED?

The pinch of rising petrol prices is being felt by every one, particularly those who have to pay for their fuel. Every one is also alarmed that the price of crude oil has effortlessly crossed the psychological barrier of $100 per barrel and is showing no signs of coming down, signaling a further price hike in the near future.

On the face of it, the price of petrol looks outrageously high, partly because of the very high component of various taxes that the government has imposed on it. Curious as ever, I carried out a brief analysis of the comparative prices of petrol, bottled water and coke, and the results came as a shock.

Let us take crude oil first. This commodity is pumped out of the bowels of the earth after a lot of effort and huge investment costs. Today, its average price is around $100 per barrel. Each barrel contains 42 American gallons or 158.97 litres of crude. This means that a litre of crude oil costs approximately $0.63 or Rs25.30. What is the price of petrol in Delhi? After the recent hike in February, it is Rs45.52 or $1.14 per litre, taking one dollar equivalent to 40 rupees.

This is the significant part. After processing in massive, complex refineries set up at great cost, petrol is available at a street price of only, yes, 80 percent more than the price of crude oil. That too after hefty taxes!

Let us see what happens to humble water when we drink it out of a bottle. Government supplied water is available to non-domestic users in Bangalore at a maximum price of Rs60 per kilolitre for those whose consumption is 100,000 litres or more. For domestic users, the lowest rate is just Rs 6 per kilolitre! It is being assumed that water will be similarly priced al across India.

So, reasonably clean, treated water which is already potable for most of us is available to manufacturers of bottled mineral water at only Rs0.06 per litre. What happens to it after it is filtered in factories that need nowhere near the kind of land, technology and investment necessary to set up an oil refinery? It is sold at an average price of Rs 11 for a one litre bottle! 25 litre reusable cans, available only on an upfront payment of a security deposit of about Rs500, get much cheaper at about Rs40.

So, the mark up for a one litre bottle of processed water is an astronomical 18333 per cent! Even for a 25 litre can it is a whopping 2667 per cent!

The story of colas is no different. A 500 ml bottle of Coke/Pepsi and the like is available for Rs20 while you can get a two litre bottle of Coke/Pepsi for Rs50. Did you notice the irony? A functionally useless, even harmful in large quantities, 2 litre bottle of water with minor additives costs as much as crude oil, while the 500 ml bottle is almost as expensive as the petrol that is pinching most of us and has political parties up in arms against the government!

Colas’ comparison with water is even more bizarre. Going even by its 2 litre bottle price, it is 41667 per cent costlier than government supplied water, 3250 per cent costlier than mineral water in 25 litre cans and 227 per cent costlier than the water sold in a one litre bottle! All this for what? For aeration and addition of a small amount of concentrate whose formula, no wonder, is secret!

When you compare these unbelievable figures with the almost insignificant change in the price of crude oil from Rs25.32 to Rs45.52, after it is processed into petrol, you will actually begin to thank God that you vehicle runs on that commodity and not on a cola, or even ordinary mineral water!

That is why the US is working overtime to ensure that every single nation in the Gulf, a region literally floating on oil, is brought firmly under its thumb. It would be disastrous for the US and other heavily oil dependant economies if the countries of the region were to suddenly wake up to the enormity of the power that lies beneath their feet, now going cheaper than even coke, and have the independence and power to correct the imbalance!

So, while the US economy has motored powerfully and is doing so on precious fuel available really cheap, thanks mainly to its dominant military clout, it has also simultaneously extracted, and continues to extract, great benefit and riches from the astronomical premiums that its companies are commanding globally from petty value additions to as basic a commodity as water, among many others. Free market at its best! Know what is the price of a 21ml HP deskjet colour ink cartridge? Rs1900, or Rs90476 per litre! Okay, this includes the cost of the cartridges too, if it makes you feel any better!

I don’t know whether Mukesh Ambani has given a thought to the idea of making and selling bottled mineral water across the country. With its retail business having kicked off nationally, Reliance Industries seems to be ideally placed to exploit economies of scale and do to this business what Mukesh’s Reliance Infocomm did to the mobile phone industry in India. Some more exciting opportunities lie untapped in this field, but this is not the platform to talk about them.

Till Mukesh Ambani or someone like him re-writes the rules, whenever you go to a petrol pump and feel your heart beating faster watching the cash meter sprint while the quantity one barely moves, just cast a glance towards a bottle of mineral water or Coke. It will make you feel much better! If that doesn’t work well, do take a look at a bottle of Evian. You will certainly thank God that at least you are not paying Rs660 for nothing more than a litre of natural spring water!

WHAT IS IT THAT INDIA HAS AND PAKISTAN DOESN'T?

When I started this blog, the only thing I was clear about was that it was not going to be one more of the numerous cut and paste jobs that crowd the net. I was not going to fill my space with what others had written elsewhere, adding perfunctory analysis/comments to claim ownership!

When I read the following article, my first reaction was that I should make an exception and post it in full. Then I hesitated, unknowingly giving enough time to Jug Suraiya to publish parts of it in his column in The Times of India. Notwithstanding this development, after long deliberation I have come to the conclusion that this is one article written by someone else that deserves to be posted here without a cut.

This excellent piece, unpublished to the best of my knowledge, has supposedly been written by one Dr Farrukh Saleem, an Islamabad based freelance Pakistani journalist. This came to me through email like it is possibly still going to many others around the world.

Reading the article will make all Indians feel very proud and all Pakistanis realize that, somewhere, their country has missed a major trick. The author highlights rather dramatically with stunning facts not too well known that India has taken a giant leap ahead of his country. Indians and Pakistanis, he says, have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup, the same genetic sequence, the same genetic marker (namely: M124), the same DNA molecule and the same DNA sequence.

Then what, he asks, is it that the Indians have and the Pakistanis don’t, to explain this huge difference? His answer is simplistic: Indians elect their leaders.

Do Indians really think that the progress being made by their country of late is because of India’s democracy? Some would argue that it is despite democracy! Blistering growth would have started much earlier but for the brakes put by the adoption of socialism which completely stifled growth till Dr Manmohan Singh, the economist, began the process of unshackling the entrepreneurial spirit and skills of Indians in the nineties.

Does it have something to do with the very idea behind the creation of the two nations itself? Is there some truth in the belief that India, rather than Pakistan, has benefited from the separation of the latter from the mother country? Has it something to do with how India and Pakistan have treated religion and governance? Has not Pakistan’s relentless fixation with Kashmir left it with little energy to focus on building the nation? Is not there an unresolved identity crisis that has Pakistan confused even 60 years after it was born?

What is it that Pakistan has and India does not? That is a question that the author should have also asked.

Well, for one, Pakistan has the big ‘O’, Osama! Then Pakistan also has, well, Pakistan, and India doesn’t! Think of anything else?

These, and more, are the questions which Indians, Pakistanis and researchers need to find the answers to. Only then will we get to understand why the two genetic ‘twins,’ as it were, have performed so differently as nations.

It would also be worth remembering that the Chinese, who have as on date beaten both India and Pakistan hollow, have never, ever elected their leaders!

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Twenty-five thousand years ago, haplogroup R2 characterized by genetic marker M124 arose in southern Central Asia. Then began a major wave of human migration whereby members migrated southward to present-day India and Pakistan (Genographic Project by the National Geographic Society; http://www.nationalgeographiccom/ ). Indians and Pakistanis have the same ancestry and share the same DNA sequence.
Here's what is happening in India:

The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese.

In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 billion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance.

In November, comes Neeta's birthday. Neeta turned forty-four three weeks ago. Look what she got from her husband as her birthday present: A sixty-million dollar jet with a custom fitted master bedroom, bathroom with mood lighting, a sky bar, entertainment cabins, satellite television, wireless communication and a separate cabin with game consoles. Neeta is Mukesh Ambani's wife, and Mukesh is not India's richest but the second richest.

Mukesh is now building his new home, Residence Antillia (after a mythical, phantom island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean). At a cost of $1 billion this would be the most expensive home on the face of the planet. At 173 meters tall Mukesh's new family residence, for a family of six, will be the equivalent of a 60-storeyed building. The first six floors are reserved for parking. The seventh floor is for car servicing and maintenance. The eighth floor houses a mini-theatre. Then there's a health club, a gym and a swimming pool. Two floors are reserved for Ambani family's guests. Four floors above the guest floors are family floors all with a superb view of the Arabian Sea. On top of everything are three helipads. A staff of 600 is expected to care for the family and their family home.

In 2004, India became the 3rd most attractive foreign direct investment destination. Pakistan wasn't even in the top 25 countries. In 2004, the United Nations, the representative body of 192 sovereign member states, had requested the Election Commission of India to assist the UN in the holding elections in Al Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah and Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan. Why the Election Commission of India and not the Election Commission of Pakistan? After all, Islamabad is closer to Kabul than is Delhi.

Imagine, 12 percent of all American scientists are of Indian origin; 38 percent of doctors in America are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians; 34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians; and 28 percent of IBM employees are Indians.

For the record: Sabeer Bhatia created and founded Hotmail. Sun Microsystems was founded by Vinod Khosla. The Intel Pentium processor, that runs 90 percent of all computers, was fathered by Vinod Dham. Rajiv Gupta co-invented Hewlett Packard's E-speak project. Four out of ten Silicon Valley start-ups are run by Indians. Bollywood produces 800 movies per year and six Indian ladies have won Miss Universe/Miss World titles over the past 10 years.

For the record: Azim Premji, the richest Muslim entrepreneur on the face of the planet, was born in Bombay and now lives in Bangalore.India now has more than three dozen billionaires; Pakistan has none (not a single dollar billionaire).

The other amazing aspect is the rapid pace at which India is creating wealth. In 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's father, left his two sons a fortune worth $2.8 billion. In 2007, their combined wealth stood at $94 billion. On 29 October 2007, as a result of the stock market rally and the appreciation of the Indian rupee, Mukesh became the richest person in the world, with net worth climbing to US$63.2 billion (Bill Gates, the richest American, stands at around $56 billion).
Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. We have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124). We have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Our culture, our traditions and our cuisine are all the same. We watch the same movies and sing the same songs. What is it that Indians have and we don't?

Indians elect their leaders.

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This post was also published by reuters.com and Chicago Sun Times

ANIL AMBANI PAYS OR RETURNS Rs 5000 CRORES TO SHAREHOLDERS?

An Article in the Hindustan Times of February 25, 2008 highlights that by announcing a 3:5 bonus to shareholders, less the promoters, of Reliance Power, Anil Ambani has given up Rs 5000 crores of his personal wealth to them!

This paying of $1.2 billion ‘from his pocket’ is ostensibly to enable shareholders of Reliance Power to make up the losses that they suffered on the listing of this most sought after stock in what has been India’s biggest IPO so far. As a result of the bonus issue, the cost of each share will come down to Rs 269 for retail investors and Rs 281 for institutional investors, a 40 and 37 percent discount respectively from the IPO price that they had initially paid.

Not willing to admit that he too allowed greed to overtake the business ethics expected from one of the richest men in the world, particularly when he was playing with the hard earned money and confidence of lakhs of small investors, Anil Ambani blamed “vested interests” for deliberately bringing down the price of the scrip on listing! If he is to be believed, the IPO price of Rs 430 for retail investors was justified!

A brief look at some figures will reveal that the company has zero installed capacity as on date with an expected generation capacity of 6,000 MW by 2011 and 26,000 MW by 2016. A revenue of Rs 7,700 crores is expected by 2012, translating into an expected EPS of Rs 8 and a book value of Rs 70 during that year. The IPO price was, thus, at a 2012 PE ratio of 52 and a price to book value ratio of above 6, four years into future! Before the IPO hit the market, its active grey market price was as high as Rs 900! With the prospect of doubling their money on listing, lakhs of applicants took loans to apply for the share.

Anil Ambani found nothing wrong when the grey market was showing sheer madness completely de-linked from reality! On the contrary, he was then happy selling this unreal dream to unsuspecting investors who had always benefited by investing in Reliance, and possibly happier watching his paper riches exploding to make him richer than elder brother and rival Mukesh! When the bubble burst, as many sane analysts had been warning all along, he promptly blamed vested interests for giving the much needed reality check at great cost to many small investors.

This ‘gift’ of $1.2 billion is, therefore, not from Anil Ambani’s pocket. He is paying nothing at all. On the contrary, he is only returning a small part of the investors’ money he himself had pocketed with some avarice by pricing the issue much above its fair value.

This bonus issue will be of no use to the many small investors who had borrowed to invest in the IPO, as they would have sold out at a loss on listing. The number of investors post listing has increased, as Anil Ambani has noticed, but that is because savvy investors have subsequently picked up the share much cheaper than the IPO price. They are the ones who will gain, not the original investors.

Dhirubhai Ambani, the visionary who painstakingly gained the faith and trust of millions of small investors, will be a sad man today. Anil, his younger son has, in one stroke of personal greed and megalomania, broken that bond of trust that the Reliance brand had built over decades. There is a price that will have to be paid by the breakaway Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) that Anil heads today for this one act, its first direct interact with the investing public after its severed its ties and logo with the empire built painstakingly over more than three decades.

There is also a warning signal hidden somewhere in this fiasco on the abilities and motivations of Anil Ambani. What is the slogan of the ADAG? “Think Bigger Think Better.” Am I seeing something here that is not there or is it apparent to many? Think bigger and better than whom? I can’t see any one else that Anil has in his mind other than elder brother Mukesh who heads the original empire created by his father and who is carrying on that legacy without either changing the logo or the slogan to loudly show his own name.

Is this slogan not pettily competitive at best and does it not carry within it an element of destructiveness?

Did the atrocious pricing of the Reliance Power issue have something to do with the logical corollary coming out of the ADAG slogan: Get Richer? Than Mukesh, of course! Anil’s motivations seem to driven more by his consuming ambition to do better and get richer than Mukesh rather than sound business sense and responsibility.

Mukesh, on the other hand, has consistently shown that he is the true inheritor of his father’s vision, a leader always thinking about, and capable of, bringing transformational changes. Let us not forget that Reliance Communications, the jewel in the ADAG crown, was Mukesh’s creation; it fell ripe into Anil’s lap at partition time. Anil has yet to show the wisdom, vision and sagacity displayed by Mukesh in leading his father’s company into a new growth path that will continue to bring cheer and profit to all stakeholders who have reposed confidence in his leadership.

The Reliance Power fiasco is the first big chink that has been exposed in Anil’s Ambani’s flamboyant armour. I cannot shake the feeling that it may not be the last. There is something disturbingly different about the way he is going about expanding his group at a furious pace; indeed his personal forays are also a radical departure from what his father taught and practiced.

The one lesson for investors is that they should clearly understand that Reliance Industries and the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group are now two entirely different entities, notwithstanding their common brand and surnames. That remembrance will help them in future to take informed investment decisions grounded in reality rather than floating on hype.

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Readers may also read: The BIG war between Mukesh and Anil!