Fight for the Empire
Hamish McDonald’s awesome book, Ambani & Sons , talks at length about the tussle between Mukesh and Anil over the Reliance empire. Reliance always had a twisted maze of “holding companies” behind which the ownership of the flagship, Reliance Industries, was hidden. The reasons for this were many, including (1) Tax saving, and (2) Having options to make, er, certain kinds of moves. The second reason, well, you can imagine what kinds of moves it would have enabled. It also allowed Dhirubhai to use those companies to ensure that the Reliance share price didn’t fall at times when traders were trying to hammer it down. Keeping the share price from falling also helped small investors... But what has that got to do with the fight between the brothers? Aha, at one point, Dhirubhai had “asked Mukesh to reconfigure the entire network”. While he was at it, someone put an idea in Mukesh’s head: “What if the new configuration could be effected to his advantage? What if he...