Reuters / Mumbai March 4, 2010, 16:44 IST
Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, is faced
with a prospect he has only rarely encountered:
not getting what he wants.After months in pursuit of LyondellBasell, Ambani's Reliance Industries
appears set to fall short in a takeover bid valuing the petrochemicals
group at $14.5 billion. Instead, Luxembourg-based Lyondell is
poised to file a reorganisation plan that may lead it out of bankruptcy.
Ambani, whose net worth was estimated at $32 billion by
Forbes in November, is likely to treat this as a small setback
in his quest to build a presence outside India, where his
conglomerate is the biggest listed company and his family
stands alongside the Tata clan at the pinnacle of the corporate elite.
Mukesh Ambani, 52, is the eldest son of Reliance's late founder
Dhirubhai, a school teacher's son whose rise from Gujarat
inspired a Bollywood film.
Media-shy, Mukesh Ambani nonetheless makes headlines for his
ongoing feud with billionaire brother Anil, as well as the 27-storey
$1 billion home he is building that towers over an old-money
neighbourhood in South Mumbai.
But it is his stewardship of Reliance, which is engaged in petrochemicals,
refining, oil and gas exploration, and textiles, where Ambani has made
his mark, and he is expected to continue looking overseas after raising
a warchest by selling $2 billion in company stock.
Despite his public reticence, Ambani clearly thinks big.
In late 2008, he commissioned a new 580,000 barrel per day
(bpd) refinery next to Reliance's 660,000 bpd facility in Gujarat,
creating the world's single-largest refining complex.
His overseas quest is driven in part by a search for crude oil to feed the refinery.
FAMILY TIES
Ambani joined Reliance in 1981 and took over the reins after his
father died in 2002. A chemical engineer by training, Ambani
dropped out of the MBA programme at Stanford University,
where he was a classmate of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
The family business has been the source both of wealth and of
heartache for Ambani, who has been embroiled in a high-profile
battle with younger brother Anil since 2004.
The latest dispute between the Ambani brothers is over details
of a gas-supply deal -- part of a 2005 agreement brokered by
their mother Kokilaben under which the Reliance group was
split following the death of their father.
While Mukesh took over the energy and petrochemicals
operations of the group, Anil emerged with the telecoms and
power businesses.
The spat over the gas supply deal is tied-up in courts and saw
Anil Ambani wage a very public campaign that included buying
front page newspaper ads asserting that India's petroleum
ministry was taking the elder brother's side in the dispute.
Last year, Ambani declared a surprise 1-for-1 bonus share issue,
endearing him to Reliance stockholders. Around the same time,
he said would take a two-thirds pay cut, days after comments
by government officials over "vulgar salaries."
PERSISTENCE
Known as the "bada bhai" -- meaning elder brother in Hindi --
the father of three enjoys watching Bollywood movies in
private screenings, dresses unassumingly, and has earned a
reputation for persistence in the boardroom and beyond.
In January, Ambani won a fierce bidding war for West Indian
cricketer Kieron Pollard, offering $750,000 for the all-rounder
to play as part of his Mumbai Indians cricket team in the third
edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty-20 tournament.
His $100 million cricket franchise also includes star Sachin
Tendulkar, the world's highest scoring batsman, and he has
found other ways to splurge.
He gave a luxury jet with showers and a bar to his wife as a
birthday present. Nita Ambani is a trained Indian classical
dancer who also runs Mumbai's Dhirubhai Ambani
International School, which is popular with the city's jetset.
A teetotaller, Ambani belongs to the Gujarati community
noted for its business acumen.
He recently faced the wrath of a radical regional Hindu group
in Mumbai for saying the city belonged to all Indians.
Ambani has remained unruffled and appears unlikely to retract his comment.
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