The feud between the Ambani family and the wealthy family

In the 2007 "Forbes" list of the world's richest people, there will probably never be another case like the Mukesh brothers who both entered the top 20. However, Mukesh did not feel very excited about this result that could bring glory to his ancestors. What lingered in his heart was more bitterness and loss.

When his father was alive, his younger brothers Anil Ambani and Mukesh stood by his father's side like right-hand men. The difference was that Mukesh served as the general manager of the company, and Anil As deputy general manager, however, at this time, not only did the brothers have no distinction between positions, but they could also support and encourage each other. However, with the sudden death of Dhirubhai, the rift between Anil and Mukesh began to appear and became wider and wider, eventually leading to a wealth division war that shocked the entire India.

Since Dhirubhai did not leave a word to his children before his death, the gap in Arni’s heart widened after Mukesh succeeded the chairmanship of the group, even though he received the chairmanship of the company president at the time. manager, but very reluctantly "always works in the shadow of his brother." Mukesh believes that it is natural for him to take the top spot in the group. On the one hand, his father had deliberately arranged for him to study for an MBA at Stanford University in the United States during his lifetime. The senior man had already determined that he would take over the company's highest authority. Not only that, Mukesh also felt that he was an engineer proficient in chemistry, and the company no longer had The second person can master the group's core business—oil exploration and refining—as skillfully as he does.

Mukesh had to seize the opportunity first because his younger brother was dissatisfied and coveted his power. His most powerful move is to turn the Reliance branch, which is engaged in the petrochemical business, into the base camp that controls the operation and ownership of the entire group - annual sales revenue accounts for 50% of the group's total revenue, and Mukesh also holds the group's petrochemical and oil assets. 34 of the equity, and 100 of the power and port subsidiaries. Of course, the result of Mukesh's continuous expansion in power is that Anil's asset share and management decision-making ability are even more obscured and downplayed, and the resulting resentment towards his brother gradually erupts like a volcano. He began writing frequently to Mukesh complaining that he excluded himself from major decisions of the group and even secretly manipulated the board of directors. Mukesh did not give in to this either. In an email to all company employees, Mukesh publicly declared that he would be solely responsible for Reliance Industries Group affairs and that the "group ownership issues" had been properly resolved. Anil, who was thoroughly angered, then submitted a 500-page report to the board of directors, listing Mukesh's various mismanagements, accusing Mukesh of falsifying accounts, and even taking him to court.

The internal strife in the Ambani family quickly became a tidbit that was reported by major media in India. The mutual attacks and abuses between Mukesh and Anil on TV once became the most watched "program" "Reliance's stock price kept flying up and down like a kite in the wind, which in turn affected the entire Mumbai stock market. In desperation, Indian Finance Minister Chidan Balam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally intervened and met with the two brothers frequently, but all their efforts were wiped out in the irreconcilable anger of the brothers.

It was Kojina, the mother of the Ambani brothers, who finally brought this protracted war to a peaceful resolution. The female head, who was used to hiding behind her husband and offering advice silently, could not bear to see her sons fighting each other endlessly. On the day of her 70th birthday, she issued a "death order" asking Mukesh and Ah Neil has to reach a settlement agreement before his father's memorial day, July 6, no matter what. Fortunately, the brothers have great respect for their mother. On the night that was 20 days away from Dilrubhai Festival, Mukesh and Anil, after a night of negotiations under the auspices of their mother, reached a property division agreement in the early morning of the next day - Mukesh would take charge of the group's main oil business. Reliance Industries Limited and Petrochemical Corporation of India in the chemical business, while Anil took over the three subsidiaries of Reliance Energy, Reliance Communications and Reliance Assets. At the same time, both brothers agreed to completely clear out each other's shares in their companies. In honor of his father, both groups use Reliance's brand and logo.

From a longer-term perspective, the split of Reliance is not completely without benefits. At least to some extent, it indicates that the 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 the Anil Ambani Group. Today, Anil is flexing his muscles in the telecommunications field. As a mobile phone service provider, Reliance Information has a market share of 1/5 in India. Anil plans to issue public shares with a total price of approximately US$3.5 billion. This will be the largest equity raise in India to date.

However, it would be naive to think that Mukesh and Anil will never interfere with each other from now on. In February 2006, the brothers had another heated argument after the younger brother accused his older brother of "failing to fulfill a gas supply agreement" and "attempting to deliberately mislead the public and shareholders." In response to the Anil Group's first public offering, there have been recent rumors on all Indian networks that senior executives of Reliance Energy, the parent company of Reliance Power, illegally transferred company assets to Reliance Power without authorization. Many politicians who received anonymous "reporting" e-mails specifically wrote to the Indian Securities Exchange concerned. Anil wrote to the Stock Exchange of India, stating that the news was anonymously slandered by Reliance Industries, headed by his brother Mukesh, with the purpose of obstructing the Reliance Power IPO process. Anil's explanation is simple: his net worth is currently only 2/3 of Mukesh's, but once the IPO is successful, his wealth is expected to grow significantly, and he will make a big leap forward in the Forbes rich list. Mukesh obviously I don't want to see the cruel result of my brother surpassing me.

My brother’s full bow and arrows

The division of the family undoubtedly dismembered the capital management ability that Mukesh had originally had at his disposal, and even in the initial period of time, due to the diversion of funds, Mukesh was The difficulty of feeling tight in your hands. Fortunately, the domestic stock market is booming, allowing Reliance Group to receive a steady stream of capital supplies. Especially when domestic economists are singing loudly about India's economic development prospects and the government will invest US$50 billion in the construction of basic and bottleneck industries such as energy and transportation in the next five years, Mukesh once again felt the odds of winning. Opportunity comes.

The petrochemical industry is the top priority of Mukesh's entire business, and it was also the first fruit he achieved when he and his father joined forces to conquer the world. Therefore, every July, Mukesh comes to the Tapti River in western India and takes a boat trip on the river himself. The Tapti River was originally clogged with silt. Dhirubhai spent a lot of manpower and spent a year dredging the river. Because the Tapti River leads to the Arabian Sea, this river has actually become a golden waterway that still plays an important strategic role for the Ambani consortium - Reliance's large and small oil tankers pass here every day to transport oil to all parts of the world. Whenever he comes to the Tapti River and sees the busy scene of ships passing by, Mukesh will always excitedly say to his entourage: "For every 100 barrels of petroleum products in the world, two barrels are produced by us."

Mukesh’s statement is actually not an exaggeration at all. If nothing unexpected happens, Reliance's output value in the oil industry alone will reach US$26 billion in 2007. Such fruitful results should be attributed to his good luck in oil and gas exploration over the years.

At present, Reliance is exploring in 34 areas in the country, and oil and gas have been discovered in 28 areas, with a success rate of 60%. According to Mukesh's estimate, by 2008-2009, Reliance's daily natural gas production will reach 88 million cubic meters, equivalent to 450,000 barrels of oil equivalent. In particular, Mukesh has recently invested US$3 billion to build a petroleum cracking plant with an annual output of 2 million tons in Jamlagal Special Zone. The plant is expected to be put into operation in 2010-2011.

For anyone who comes to visit Reliance’s oil mining and smelting base, Mukesh will always say unabashedly: The Bay of Bengal “is creating huge 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. His greater ambitions have radiated to all parts of the world and have repeatedly yielded results.

In Yemen, Reliance recently obtained oil exploration rights for land parcels 34 and 37 in the country; in Guatemala, Reliance won the bid to build an environmentally friendly refinery and power station, with an estimated total expenditure of US$7.73 billion, but a return rate of up to 20%; In Australia, Reliance has acquired oil from three blocks; in Saudi Arabia, in addition to seeking exploration opportunities, Reliance is considering partnering with Saudi Arabian Oil Company and taking a stake in petrochemical projects, and it plans to acquire Scotland's North Sea Oil Company. In addition, seeing the recent good results in Egypt's oil and petrochemical investments, Reliance has recently been intensively considering investing in Iraq's refinery upgrade project.

It is difficult to retrieve a fully drawn bow and arrow. When the Indian government announced the opening up of the retail industry, Mukesh, who has a keen sense of smell, once again seized the opportunity and issued challenges to compete with Wal-Mart from time to time. In the past two years, Mukesh has applied for the construction of various special zones in the country, ranging from Mumbai to Haryana, from Karnataka to Gujarat, and from Andhra to West Bengal, with a total area of ??10 million hectares, with a total investment of over 1,000 billion rupees. The special zone will engage in the research and development of new products such as biotechnology and new energy to enjoy a series of government tax incentives and create conditions for the establishment of gas stations, retail stores, chain stores, specialty stores, and supermarkets across the country.

Mukesh also plans to purchase 2,000 acres of land in Karnataka, or 10 acres in each of the 175 counties, and 27 headquarters as a base for exporting vegetables and fruits overseas. base.

As an alternative to investing in the service industry, Mukesh has extended his reach to the field of culture and education and has made considerable achievements.

In memory of his father, he established a Dhirubhai International High School in Pune 4 years ago and put it in charge of his wife Nita Ambani. At the same time, after more than two years of hard work, Dhirubhai Ambani International University was established in Mumbai not long ago. The school covers an area of ??100 acres and has many majors such as science and art, and is open to international enrollment. Mukesh told everyone he met that he wanted to turn it into a prestigious university like Harvard, Stanford and Oxford.

A clear structure supports a huge Mukesh industrial empire: According to the 2007 Fortune 500 ranking, Reliance ranked 269th in terms of sales, jumping 75 places from the previous year. According to asset statistics, Reliance ranks 299th, occupying the top position among Indian private companies.

While continuing the Ambani family’s glorious wealth path, Mukesh also entered the palace surrounded by flowers and applause. Completely different from his father who was a strong charismatic leader, Mukesh, 50, focuses on the execution of leadership. The leader has begun to move away from the patriarchal rule created by Dhirubhai. Instead, he has placed more emphasis on relying on a mature and capable management team, and has begun to reorganize and distribute leadership in action. To this end, Mook Shi was awarded the "Asian Social Leadership Award" and was the second Indian entrepreneur to receive this honor after Lakshmi Mittal.

The World Economic Forum in Switzerland said that Mukesh is a "global leader of tomorrow", and the American "Times" magazine included him in its roster of young leaders in the new century. Due to Reliance's contribution to cooperation with American companies in emerging fields such as energy, life sciences, biotechnology, retail, and infrastructure, Mukesh received the 2007 Global Vision Award from the U.S.-India Business Council.

"Palace" surpasses Versailles

In the eyes of many people, Mumbai will become a world-famous financial center in the future. However, in Mukesh's view, the capital will become itself Home base for family life and activities. In early 2007, Mukesh specially selected a "feng shui treasure land" in the center of Mumbai, and had already started building a magnificent "palace" for himself and his family. Named after the ancient mythical island "Antilla" and costing a total of US$1 billion, this huge building is 173 meters high, which is the same height as a 60-story building; the total floor area of ??the entire building reaches 110,000 square meters. , surpassing the famous Palace of Versailles in France.

According to the architectural plan, this skyscraper mansion will have an independent helipad, several open-air gardens, a home cinema covering an entire floor, and VIP rooms surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the panoramic view of Mumbai. It will occupy two floors. fitness club and a large parking lot covering 6 floors. In September 2008, Mukesh, his mother, wife and three children will move into the "palace" on time. Also staying here are 600 full-time employees and servants of Mukesh, who will be responsible for taking care of the food, daily life and arranging various activities for Mukesh's family of six.

Many people are puzzled by Mukesh's astonishing act, but as long as they are considered among a specific group in India, they don't seem to think that Mukesh is anything special. Unlike 10 years ago when rich Indians preferred not to drive a Mercedes-Benz and live in smaller apartments, now the rich Indians who are at the top of their wealth do not mind flaunting and showing off their wealth. Lakshmi Mittal once bought a mansion in the Kensington Palace Gardens area of ??London for 70 million pounds, setting a record for the highest single-house transaction in the world at the time. At the same time, Lakshmi also rented the Palace of Versailles in Paris, France to prepare for her daughter's wedding, spending millions of dollars in six days. Earlier, Subrata Roy, the president of India's Sahara Group, used 27 planes to pick up wedding guests from all over the country for her son's wedding in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and prepared 200 Mercedes-Benz cars. Guests will be transported from the airport to the 300-hectare Sahara Estate. Compared with these people, Mukesh seems to be worse. Although Mukesh is introverted, low-key and conservative, and often lacks self-confidence due to his poor eloquence in public. He even always said that he is "afraid of the media", but when he talks about his business, he is not modest: "There are only a few people in the world who are afraid of the media." Two companies can build large projects from scratch - just Microsoft and my company." This mentality of regarding wealth as a personal label cannot but drive Mukesh's external consumption behavior to extremes.

However, perhaps Mukesh must face the real economic environment in India. As the fourth largest economic country in Asia, India's poverty problem has always been the country's biggest problem. According to statistics, the number of poor people in India has more than tripled in the past 20 years, reaching more than 60 million, which is larger than the entire population of the United Kingdom. Among the many cities in India, Mumbai has the largest slum area. About 6.5 million people live in disorderly slums with wastewater flowing across them, making it the largest in Asia. It is precisely for this reason that "Antila" has attracted criticism and denunciation from all sides. Many Indian media believe that in a country where the gap between rich and poor is widening day by day, Mukesh's construction of such a building has exposed his egoistic personality, so much so that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to stand up and speak out. He loudly called on the country's business leaders to "avoid conspicuous consumption" and instead strive to be "models of moderate consumption". One fact that Mukesh did not expect was that Mumbai City Hall officials believed that there were irregularities in the land transaction process of the "Antila" Building and were ready to file charges. Once the accusation is established, the "Antila" project will be temporarily suspended.

However, Mukesh would never believe that "Antila" would be stillborn. Because he knows very clearly that with the influence and skills of the Ambani family, the probability of such an outcome is almost zero. Over more than 40 years of business operations, the Ambani family has formed delicate relationships with all levels of Indian government. Indian media said that the Ambani family is familiar with all political dignitaries and senior bureaucrats - regardless of their political affiliations, the Ambani family even knows the birthdays and wedding anniversaries of each of them. It can be said that their influence is unrivaled in India. . It is precisely by relying on these deep upper-level relationships that Reliance can get approval for any project in a short period of time in India, where bureaucracy is rampant. In particular, Reliance can influence the government to issue countless laws by influencing senior officials and even the Prime Minister himself. Industrial policies that are very beneficial to Reliance. So much so that there is a joke circulating in India: Someone asked, who is the most powerful political party in India? The answer is: Reliance Party of India. There is no doubt that Mukesh has inherited and learned the above rules of survival from his father.