Anil: Lots to reveal

Mumbai, Jan. 10: Anil Ambani ? the disgruntled younger scion of the Reliance group ? continues to wreak havoc with his disclosures.

The latest damage has been caused by media leaks concerning the status of four Reliance group companies ? Reliance Polyolefins, Reliance Aromatics and Petrochemicals, Reliance Energy and Project Development and Reliance Chemicals ? which picked up a 4.7 per cent stake in RIL after the merger of Reliance Petroleum with the group?s flagship company in 2000.

The Mukesh Ambani camp today scrambled to deal with the latest embarrassment by confirming that the four companies were classified as persons acting in concert (PAC) ? a nomenclature used to define entities associated closely with the promoters ? but clarified that they were created for the benefit of all shareholders of RIL and not just the promoters.

Anil has been busy filing dissent notes on the buyback not only in the boardroom but also with the capital market watchdog. Reliance Industries, managed by Mukesh Ambani, had ignored his misgivings while kickstarting the mop-up of RIL shares aggregating 6.3 lakh shares on the first day itself from the stock markets.

At the RIL board meeting on December 27, Anil had made a Powerpoint presentation arguing for a buyback through the tender route instead of an open market purchase of shares. As a last ditch effort to stall the buyback, he also argued for a bonus issue instead of a lower buyback price for the RIL stock.

The buyback, dubbed by Reliance Industries as the biggest such exercise undertaken by any Indian corporate house and pegged at Rs 2,999 crore, was carried out in complete secrecy and even caught the markets by surprise.

The corporate grapevine is already beginning to speculate about the next salvo from the Anil camp.

The buzz is that this could relate to Reliance Capital. An intriguing press release issued by Anil Ambani's office says he had no role to play in the management or operations of Reliance Capital and that he was not even a director on the board of the company.

Until the details of the boardroom battle spilled out into the open last November, it was widely thought that Anil controlled Reliance Capital.

The finance company is chaired by D. N. Chaturvedi and Anand Jain is the vice-chairman. Anil does not see eye to eye with Jain, who is considered to be a close ally of Mukesh.

The younger sibling made that apparent when he resigned from IPCL blaming Jain for engineering the rift with his brother. Anil had resigned from IPCL saying, ?It's below my dignity to be on the same board as Anand Jain.?

Last week, Anil met finance minister P. Chidambaram and company affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta for a couple of hours. The department of company affairs comes under Gupta's ministry, lending credence to rumours that Anil could have voiced a lot misgivings relating to corporate governance issues concerning RIL.