The feud between the Ambani family and the giant
When his father was alive, his younger brothers, anil Ambani and Mukesh, rallied around the old man like right arms. The difference is that Mukesh is the general manager of the company and anil is the deputy general manager. However, at this time, the two brothers not only have no differences in positions, but also support and encourage each other. However, with the sudden death of Dilaba, the rift between anil and Mukesh began to appear and grew bigger and bigger, which finally triggered a sensational wealth division war among Indian giants.
Because Dilaba didn't leave a message to the children before his death, the gap in Arnie's heart became bigger and bigger after Mukesh took over as chairman of the group. Although he got the position of general manager of the company at that time, he was reluctant to "always do things in the shadow of his brother". On the other hand, Mukesh thinks it is natural for him to sit at the top of the group. On the one hand, before his father died, he had deliberately arranged for him to study for an MBA at Stanford University in the United States, and the highest authority for him to take over the company had already been delineated by the old man. Moreover, Mukesh feels that he is an engineer proficient in chemistry, and no one else in the company can master the core business of the group like him-oil exploration and smelting.
The younger brother's dissatisfaction and greed for his power forced Mukesh to take the lead. Its most powerful measure is to turn the reliance branch engaged in petrochemical business into a base camp to control the operation and ownership of the whole group-the annual sales revenue accounts for 50% of the group's total revenue, Mukesh also holds 34% of the shares of the group's petrochemical and petroleum assets, and 0/00% of the shares of the power and port subsidiary/KLOC. Of course, as a result of the expansion of Mukesh's strength, anil's asset share and management decision-making ability became more concealed and diluted, and his resentment against his brother gradually erupted like a volcano. He began to write to Mukesh frequently, complaining that he excluded himself from the major decisions of the group and even manipulated the board of directors secretly. Mukesh did not give in to this. In an email to all employees of the company, Mukesh publicly declared that he would be fully responsible for the affairs of Reliance Industrial Group, and the "group ownership problem" had been properly solved. Angry, anil then submitted a 500-page report to the board of directors, detailing various mismanagement of Mukesh, accusing Mukesh of falsifying accounts and even taking him to court.
The infighting of the Ambani family quickly became tabloid news reported by major media in India. The mutual attack and abuse between Mukesh and anil on TV once became the highest-rated "program", and the stock price of Reliance Company kept flying up and down like a kite in the wind, further affecting the violent fluctuation of the entire Mumbai stock market. In desperation, Indian Finance Minister Khitan baram and Prime Minister Singh personally intervened and met with the two brothers frequently, but all efforts were wiped out in the deadly anger of the two brothers.
Ji Na, the mother of the Ambani brothers, finally settled the protracted war peacefully. The housewife who used to hide behind her husband and give advice silently really didn't like the endless fighting between her sons. On her 70th birthday, she gave a "death order" asking Mukesh and anil to reach a settlement agreement before her father's Memorial Day on July 6th. Fortunately, the two brothers respect their mother very much. Twenty days before the memorial day of the fallen soldiers in Dilabai, Mukesh and anil reached an agreement on property division in the early morning of the next day after a night of negotiations under the auspices of their mother. Mukesh will take charge of Reliance Industry Co., Ltd. and Indian Petrochemical Company, which are the main petrochemical businesses of the group, while anil will take over Reliance Energy, Reliance Communications and Reliance Assets. At the same time, the two brothers agreed to completely eliminate each other's shares in their own company. To show their memory of their father, the two groups used faithful's brand and logo at the same time.
From a longer-term point of view, the split of Reliance is not completely without benefits, at least to some extent, it indicates that Reliance Family Group can release greater business opportunities in the competition between two different operators. The day after the agreement was signed, anil announced the establishment of anil Ambani Group. Today, anil has made great efforts in the field of telecommunications. As a mobile phone service provider, Reliance Information has a market share of 65,438+0/5 in India. Anil plans to issue public shares with a total price of about $3.5 billion, which will be the largest stock issue in India so far.
However, it would be naive to think that Mukesh and anil will never interfere with each other again. In February 2006, the younger brother accused him of "failing to fulfill a natural gas supply agreement" and "trying to deliberately mislead the public and shareholders", and the two brothers had another fierce quarrel. In response to the initial public offering of annear Group, the whole Indian network has recently heard that the senior management of Reliance Energy, the parent company of Reliance Power, illegally transferred the company's assets to Reliance Power without authorization, and many politicians who received anonymous "tip-off" emails wrote to the Indian Stock Exchange to express their concern. Anil sent a letter to the Indian Stock Exchange, claiming that the news was anonymous slander by Reliance Industrial Company headed by his brother Mukesh, with the purpose of obstructing the process of the issuance of shares by Reliance Power Company. Anil's explanation is simple: at present, his worth is only 2/3 of Mukesh's, but once the IPO is successful, his wealth is expected to increase substantially, and he will make a great leap forward in the Forbes rich list. Mukesh obviously doesn't want to see his brother surpass himself.
Brother's bow and arrow
The separation undoubtedly dismembered Mukesh's original capital operation ability. Even in the early days, Mukesh felt the difficulty of being short of money because of the diversion of funds. Fortunately, the domestic stock market is singing and dancing, which makes Reliance Group get a steady supply of funds. Especially under the background that domestic economists are singing loudly about the prospect of India's economic development, and the government will invest 50 billion dollars in the construction of basic and bottleneck industries such as energy and transportation in the next five years, Mukesh once again feels the opportunity to win.
Petrochemical industry is the most important part of Mukesh's whole chessboard, and it is also the first fruit when he and his father joined hands to conquer the world. Therefore, every July, Mukesh will come to the Taputi River in western India and walk on the river by boat. The Taputi River was originally blocked by silt, and Dilaba spent a lot of manpower and a year dredging the river. Because the Taputi River leads to the Arabian Sea, this river has actually become a golden waterway that the Ambani consortium still plays an important strategic role-every day, the large and small tankers of Reliance Company transport oil to all parts of the world through it. As long as he came to Taputi River and watched the busy scenes of passing ships, Mukesh would always excitedly say to his entourage, "For every 65,438,000 barrels of petroleum products in the world, we produce two barrels."
Mukesh's remarks are not exaggerated at all. If nothing unexpected happens, in 2007, the output value of Reliance in the oil industry alone will reach $26 billion. Such fruitful results should be attributed to his good luck in oil and gas exploration for many years.
At present, Reliance Company has explored 34 areas in China and found oil and gas in 28 areas, with a success rate of 60%. According to Mukesh's estimation, by 2008-2009, Reliance's daily natural gas output will reach 88 million cubic meters, equivalent to 450,000 barrels of oil equivalent. In particular, Mukesh recently invested US$ 3 billion to build an oil cracking plant with an annual output of 2 million tons in Geer Special Zone, Jamra, which is expected to be put into operation in 2010-201.
For anyone who comes to visit Reliance's oil exploration and smelting base, Mukesh will always say publicly: The Bay of Bengal "is creating rolling wealth for us like the Gulf of Mexico in the United States!"
Of course, Mukesh's vision is not limited to the domestic oil source market, and his greater ambition has spread all over the world and achieved fruitful results. In Yemen, Reliance recently obtained the oil exploration rights of 34 plots and 37 plots in the country; In Guatemala, Reliance Company won the bid to build an environmentally-friendly refinery and power station, with an estimated total expenditure of 7.73 billion US dollars, but the rate of return can reach 20%. In Australia, Reliance obtains oil from three oil fields; In Saudi Arabia, besides seeking exploration opportunities, Reliance is also considering cooperation with Saudi Arabian Oil Company to take a stake in petrochemical projects, and plans to acquire Scottish North Sea Oil Company. In addition, Reliance has been intensively considering investing in refinery upgrading projects in Iraq due to its good record of investing in Egypt's oil and petrochemical industry not long ago.
It's hard to take back all the bows and arrows. When the Indian government announced the opening of the retail industry, Mukesh, with a keen sense of smell, once again seized the opportunity and challenged from time to time to compete with Wal-Mart. In the last two years, Mukesh applied for the construction of various special zones in China, from Mumbai to Haryana, Karnataka to Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh to West Bengal, with a total area of 654.38+million hectares and a total investment of over 654.38+billion rupees. The special zone will engage in research and development of new products such as biotechnology and new energy, thus enjoying a series of preferential policies such as government taxes, and creating conditions for building gas stations, retail stores, chain stores, specialty stores and supermarkets throughout the country.
Mukesh also plans to buy 2,000 acres of land in Karnataka, that is, 10 acre in each of 75 counties, and has 27 headquarters as its base for exporting vegetables and fruits overseas.
As another choice to invest in the service industry, Mukesh extended his tentacles to the field of culture and education and made great achievements.
In memory of his father, he established Adi Rabai International Middle School in Pune four years ago, with his wife Nita Ambani as the principal. At the same time, after more than two years' efforts, Dilabai Ambani International University was recently established in Mumbai. The school covers an area of 100 mu and is open to international students. Mukesh told everyone that he wanted to turn it into a famous university such as Harvard, Stanford and Oxford.
A clear framework has supported a huge Mukesh industrial empire: according to the ranking of Fortune 500 in 2007, Reliance Company ranked 269th in sales, up 75 places from the previous year; According to asset statistics, Reliance ranks 299th, ranking first among Indian private enterprises.
While continuing the brilliant road to wealth of the Ambani family, Mukesh also walked into the hall surrounded by flowers and applause. Unlike his father, who was a charismatic leader, Mukesh, 50, focused on the implementation of leadership. The person in charge of the company has begun to break away from the paternalistic rule created by Dilaba, but put more emphasis on relying on a mature and capable management team, and began to reorganize and distribute the leadership in action. To this end, Mukesh was awarded the "Asian Social Leader Award", and he is the second Indian entrepreneur to win this honor after Lakshmi Mittal.
The World Economic Forum in Switzerland called Mukesh a "global leader of tomorrow", and Time magazine in the United States listed him in the list of young leaders in the new century. Mukesh was awarded the 2007 Global Vision Award by the Indian Business Council because of the cooperation between Reliance and American companies in the sunrise fields such as energy, life sciences, biotechnology, retail and infrastructure.
Palace surpasses Versailles.
For many people, Mumbai will become a world-famous financial center in the future. However, in Mukesh's view, the capital will become the base camp for his family's life and activities. At the beginning of 2007, Mukesh specially selected a "land of geomantic omen" in the center of Mumbai, and started to build a magnificent residence "palace" for himself and his family. This huge building with a total cost of $65.438+0 billion is named after the ancient mythical island "Antila", and its height is 654.38+0.73 meters, which is equivalent to the height of a 60-story building. The total construction area of the whole building reaches 1 10000 square meters, which exceeds the famous Palace of Versailles in France. According to the architectural plan, this skyscraper will have an independent helipad, several open-air gardens, a home theater covering the whole floor, a VIP room surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass, a panoramic view of Mumbai, a two-story health club and a super-large parking lot covering six floors. In September 2008, Mukesh, his mother, wife and three children will move into the "palace" on time. At the same time, there are 600 full-time employees and servants in Mukesh's staff, who will be responsible for taking care of the diet of the Mukesh family of six and arranging various activities.
Many people are puzzled by Mukesh's amazing behavior, but as long as he thinks about it in a specific group in India, he doesn't seem to think that Mukesh is any different. Unlike 10 years ago, the rich in India would rather not drive a Mercedes than live in a smaller apartment. Nowadays, the rich people in India, who stand at the top of wealth, don't mind making public and showing off their wealth. Lakshmi Mittal once bought a mansion in Kensington Palace Garden in London for 70 million pounds, which set a record for the transaction volume of a single house in the world at that time. At the same time, Lakshmi rented the Palace of Versailles in Paris and spent millions of dollars in six days to prepare her daughter's wedding. Previously, Suberata Roy, president of Indian Sahara Group, used 27 planes to pick up wedding guests from all over the country for his son's wedding in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and prepared 200 Mercedes-Benz cars to take the guests from the airport to the Sahara Manor covering an area of 300 hectares. Compared with these people, Mukesh seems to be worse. Although Mukesh is introverted, low-key and conservative, and often lacks self-confidence in public because of his poor eloquence, he even claims to be "afraid of meeting the media", but when it comes to his career, he is not modest: "Only two companies in the world can build large-scale projects from scratch-only Microsoft and my company". This mentality of taking wealth as a personal label has to push Mukesh's external consumption behavior to the extreme.
However, perhaps Mukesh must face up to India's real economic environment. As the fourth economic power in Asia, poverty in India has always been the biggest problem in this country. According to statistics, the number of poor people in India has more than tripled in the past 20 years, reaching more than 60 million, more than the population of Britain as a whole. Among many cities in India, Mumbai has the largest slum, with about 6.5 million people living in slums with chaotic and cross-flowing sewage, the highest in Asia. Just like this, the "Antila" attracted criticism and condemnation from all directions. Many media in India believe that in a country where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, Mukesh's building exposed his egoistic character, so that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to stand up and speak. He loudly appealed to the country's business leaders to "avoid ostentatious consumption" and strive to become a "model of moderate consumption". What Mukesh didn't expect was that Mumbai City Hall officials thought that there were irregularities in the land transaction of the "Antilla" building, and they were prepared to file charges. Once the charges are established, the "Antilla" project will be temporarily closed.
However, Mukesh would never believe that "Antila" would be stillborn. Because he knows very well that with the influence and skills of the Ambani family, the probability of this result is almost zero. After more than 40 years of commercial operation, the Ambani family has formed a subtle relationship with Indian governments at all levels. According to Indian media, the Ambani family is familiar with all political dignitaries and senior bureaucrats-regardless of their political factions, the Ambani family even knows each of their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, so it can be said that their influence is unparalleled in India. It is precisely because of these deep upper-level relationships that in India, where bureaucracy is rampant, Reliance can get the approval of any project in a short time. Reliance Group, in particular, can get the government to issue numerous industrial policies that are very beneficial to Reliance by influencing senior officials and even the Prime Minister himself. As a result, there is a joke circulating in India: someone asks, who is the most powerful political party in India? The answer is: India's Reliance Party. There is no doubt that Mukesh inherited and learned the above survival rules from his father.