Word: ambani
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...BUSINESS Obituary: Dhirubhai Ambani...
...popular version of Ambani's story goes like this: born in an impoverished village, at 16 he goes off to Aden to learn business. He returns 10 years later and starts a small company. By canny trading around the textile bazaars of Bombay, he corners the market in imported polyester, starts his own factory, outwits sclerotic bureaucrats in New Delhi who are trying to run the economy by regulation, and ultimately ignites the moribund Indian stock market with his vision of turning Reliance into a petrochemical and oil refining empire?a dream he realized not long before he died...
...There is also a noir version. In the 1980s, allegations were raised in Parliament and in newspapers that Ambani was a master manipulator?that he received favors from politicians, cajoled officials to interpret the rules his way, brought down endless audits and inspections on his rivals, and reputedly had the power even to make or break governments. In 1985, leaders of opposition political parties signed a letter urging a thorough legislative probe into Reliance over "massive and ingenious schemes and methods adopted by the company in gross contempt of public policies and statutory laws...
...heroes of India's ancient literary epics are never purely heroic. Ambani's reputation was not untarnished, but his great achievement was that he showed Indians what was possible. With no Oxford or Yale degree and no family capital, he achieved what the Elite "brown sahibs" of New Delhi could not: he built an ultramodern, profitable, global enterprise in India itself. What's more, he enlisted four million Indians, a generation weaned on nanny-state socialism, in an adventure in can-do capitalism, convincing them to load up on Reliance stock. His messianic annual shareholders' meetings were held...
...pity is that while manipulations might have been a virtual necessity to succeed in business in the corrupt and stultified economy of the 1970s and 1980s, Ambani's tactics continued to raise concerns after 1991 when liberalizing reforms began to kick in. Reliance nearly suffered a disastrous collapse in investor confidence in 1995, when the Bombay Stock Exchange raised questions over share duplications and other accounting anomalies that appeared to disadvantage minority shareholders. The company subsequently pleaded guilty to technical breaches and clerical errors but no intent to defraud was found. Confidence was ultimately restored and the share price rebounded...