Zor se Bol

This comes right from a saas-bahu type serial when the patriarch of a rich family passes away leaving a fortune behind to his two able sons, hoping they would spread his legacy far and beyond. I’m not sure whether Mr Dhirubhai Ambani would have liked the way his legacy – Reliance Industries has split up.

Photo - Reliance Industries

Ever since Ambani senior died, his sons Mukesh and Anil Ambani have sliced and diced his company and created their own version of their father’s empire, but the buck does not stop there, the rivalry has taken a turn for the worse with their battles often taking a legal course, with Anil, in particular taking the media’s help to hit back at Mukesh. Oxford Analytica, an independent consultancy firm in its report has said that the rivalry often belies business ethics and goes beyond the corporate governance model that companies these days go all out to adhere to. The proposed Reliance Communication – MTN merger is a case in point where Anil accused his brother, Mukesh, of sabotaging the deal.

The brother are using their moolah power to get back to each other via the political route, Oxford Analytica has reported that “the rivalry between the brothers has moved well beyond sports sponsorship and loss of a few contracts. It has begun to affect national politics, too, and billions of dollars in potential investment.” It’s a known fact that Anil is very close to Amar Singh (read Samajwadi Party) and supposedly pumps in millons of rupees into the political outfit, now with the SP joining the UPA government at centre, Anil is getting back at his brother, the report by Oxford Analytica noted that “SP leader Amar Singh is believed to have demanded from the government, as the price of its support, a windfall tax on private energy companies and a ban on the export of refined petroleum products — both of which would devastate Mukesh’s interests”

I’m not sure how KokilaBen Ambani, mother to the two younger Ambanis is coping up with daily corporate squabbling that her sons engage in, but even she would have known that the parent company could have been n-fold stronger if the siblings had stuck together.