In 2002, a generation of wealthy Indian businessman Drubhai Ambani died without leaving a will, which directly led to the death of his two sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani. On the road to fight for family property. In 2004, under the mediation of his mother, Mukesh and Anil divided the business empire left by Drubai. In the first few years, the brothers both made it to the Forbes list of the world’s richest people. In 2016, however, Anil’s business empire dwindled as Mukesh ventured into the telecommunications business that originally belonged to Anil. Not long ago, Mukesh ranked 11th on the “2021 Forbes Global Rich List” with a worth of US$84.5 billion, becoming the richest man in Asia and the 13th time in a row to be the richest man in India, while Anil is in debt of US$3 billion. The stark contrast between the two has become a topic of conversation among netizens all over the world… The Ambani
family, known as the “Rockefeller of India”, is one of the most influential private family consortia in India.
Its first-generation leader, Drubhai Ambani, started from scratch, starting from an import and export company, and turned to investment in petrochemical raw materials, creating India’s largest private enterprise Reliance Group, whose assets once reached 4% of India’s GDP.
In 1957, Drubai’s eldest son, Mukesh Ambani, was born in Aden, Yemen. His son was taciturn and had no aura of a leader. He was just an ordinary person. The second son, Anil Ambani, is naturally outgoing, lively and talkative, and is even more popular with Drubai.
At the beginning of 1980, due to the urgent need for leadership talents in Reliance Industries, Droubai recalled Mukesh, who was studying for an MBA at Stanford University in the United States, to let him and his younger brother Anil take care of the daily affairs of the company.
When helping his father with the daily affairs of the company, Mukesh’s unyielding spirit and not afraid of hardships were vividly displayed. When encountering thorny problems, he did not report them to his father immediately, but did his best to solve them. It is precisely because of Mukesh’s research spirit that Reliance Group successfully entered the oil industry in 1991 and established Reliance Oil Refining Private Company, becoming the first private company in India to enter the oil field.
Compared with his brother’s steadfastness and diligence, Anil seems to be a little step-by-step. Apart from completing the assigned tasks, he rarely makes constructive suggestions.
For the changes of the two sons, Droubai saw it in his eyes, and he quickly appointed Mukesh as the general manager and Anil as the deputy general manager. To outsiders, this decision seems normal. But in Anil’s heart, the father who preferred him when he was young has changed his mind.
In 1986, Drubai had a stroke and was unable to continue to manage the company, so he began to delegate power to his two sons, and let Mukesh and Anil have their own sides in the company. In 2002, Droubai tragically passed away from a second stroke. At this time, Reliance Group has become a veritable business empire, with total assets of 16.8 billion US dollars.
Drubay did not leave a will, nor did he mention any intention to distribute his property. At the beginning, the brothers lived peacefully together, and jointly completed many construction projects of large oil refineries and chemical plants. They also successfully implemented a diversification strategy and entered the field of mobile communications, which enabled Reliance Telecom to seize India in less than a year. 21% share of the mobile communication market. Everyone thought that the Ambani Brotherhood had always stood at the front of the Reliance Group, but in fact, the two have long since been separated from each other.
After Mukesh took over as the chairman of the group, the gap in Anil’s heart was increasing. Although he got the position of general manager, he was very reluctant to “always work in the shadow of his brother”. On the other hand, Mukesh believes that it is logical for him to take the top spot in the group. On the one hand, his father intends to arrange for him to study for an MBA at Stanford University, and his taking over the highest authority of the company has long been delineated by the elderly. On the one hand, he feels that he is proficient in chemistry, and that there is no other person in the leadership who can handle the core business of the group – oil extraction and smelting – as well as him.
In the face of Anil, who would seize power from him at any time, Mukesh decided to strike first. He turned the Reliance branch engaged in the petrochemical business into a base that controls the operation and ownership of the entire group. At the same time, he also holds the group’s petrochemical and petroleum 34% of the assets and 100% of the power and port subsidiaries.
In the face of Mukesh’s aggressiveness, Anil naturally would not sit still. He frequently complained to the media that his brother excluded himself from major decisions of the group, and even secretly manipulated the board of directors. In an email to all employees, Mukesh publicly declared that he would be solely responsible for Reliance Group affairs and that the “group ownership issue” had been properly resolved.
Seeing that Mukesh was about to take over, Anil resorted to a trick to “dig his heart out”. He used various reasons to exclude the six directors who had close contacts with Mukesh from the group, and then kept writing letters to the media, accusing him. Mukesh secretly manipulated the board of directors and instructed his subordinates to rewrite the minutes of the board of directors. “Now we are no longer as hard as before to consolidate the cause left by my father. This change is sad.”
After a series of combined punches, Anil finally let out a bad breath, but what disappointed him was that Mukesh still sat firmly on the Diaoyutai and turned a deaf ear. What Anil didn’t know was that when he was busy creating public opinion, Mukesh secretly acquired the shares of the directors who were excluded by Anil, and he also took measures to appease other shareholders, not only providing annual dividends, It also increased capital and shares, successfully stabilizing most of the shareholders.
After completing the move to “buy the hearts of the people”, Mukesh decided to “declare war” on Anil.
Disintegration The conflict between
brothers finally broke out at the 2004 annual meeting of the group’s board of directors. Mukesh blames himself for the company’s stellar performance. His publicity completely angered Anil, and the next day he leaked the evidence of his brother’s tax evasion to the media.
The infighting of the Ambani family quickly became a lace news reported by major media in India. The mutual attacks and abuse of Mukesh and Anil on TV once became the highest-rated “program”. The kites in the wind flew up and down, and then affected the violent ups and downs of the entire Mumbai stock market.
In desperation, the then Indian Finance Minister Chidan Baram and Prime Minister Singh came forward to mediate, and met with the two brothers frequently, but all efforts were in vain in the anger of the two brothers.
Seeing that the family conflict has become a farce, the mother Kegina issued a “death order”, requiring Mukesh and Anil to reach a reconciliation agreement before their father’s funeral on July 6th. Fortunately, the brothers have great respect for their mother.
On June 16, 2004, Mukesh and Anil negotiated overnight under the auspices of his mother, and reached a property division agreement in the early morning of the next day – Mukesh will be in charge of the group’s main petrochemical business, Reliance Industries Limited. Company and Indian Petrochemical Company, Anil took over the three subsidiaries of Reliance Energy, Reliance Communications and Reliance Assets. At the same time, the brothers agreed to completely clear their shares in the other company, and both groups used the Reliance brand and logo in honor of their father.
After the two brothers separated, Mukesh focused on the oil and petrochemical industry and became Asia’s richest man in 2007 with a fortune of US$55.8 billion. After that, Mukesh began to expand the industry, entering retail, e-commerce and other industries successively, and even determined to build Amazon and Wal-Mart in India.
Mukesh’s business is booming, but he is still dissatisfied. His mother handed over the communication business he has always loved to Anil. When he was working hard with his father in the family business, he had a long experience in the field of telecommunications, and even formulated a grand plan for the development of 5G business in India. But when dividing the property, the two reached a “non-competition agreement”. According to the agreement, Mukesh could not develop the telecommunications industry to compete with his younger brother.
But how could Mukesh be willing to be bound by a paper agreement!
Mukesh has always coveted the communications business, but it was Anil who negotiated a merger with MTN Group, South Africa’s largest telecom operator. At that time, Anil was seeking new development opportunities. He negotiated with MTN Group to discuss the merger of the two parties. If the transaction is successful, then his telecommunications network will expand the territory, and his telecommunications industry will open up the Atlantic Ocean and cross the Himalayas. to the Cape of Good Hope.
Just when Anil thought the victory was in hand, MTN Group changed its previous positive attitude. Anil investigated and found that Mukesh was making trouble. He sent a letter to MTN as the “leader of the Reliance Group”, asking MTN to postpone the merger. Seeing the cooked duck flying, Anil was shaking with anger.
In February 2008, in response to Anil accusing Mukesh in the media of “failure to fulfill a gas supply agreement” and “attempting to deliberately mislead the public and shareholders”, Mukesh exposed the details of Anil Group’s public offering. Some insiders, the top management of Reliance Energy, the power parent company, illegally transferred company assets to Reliance Power without authorization. Out of desperation, Anil defended in his letter to the Stock Exchange of India that these messages were slandered anonymously by his brother Mukesh, whose purpose was to obstruct the process of Reliance Electric’s offering, “My worth is currently only three of Mukesh’s. Two out of two, but once the IPO is successful, the fortune is expected to grow significantly, and the Forbes rich list will make a big leap, and Mukesh obviously does not want to see me surpassing his brutal results.”
The news of Anil’s unfair offering aroused the resentment of Indian shareholders. Mukesh took the opportunity to attack and sued Anil in court in 2010, demanding that the “non-competition agreement” signed at the beginning be invalid.
The two brothers went to court. For the sake of wealth, the mother Kegina once again mediated between the two, but this time Mukesh was firm and unwilling to compromise. With no success, Kegina could only live a reclusive life, allowing her two sons to fight.
The Ambani brothers’ lawsuit is in full swing, but it does not prevent them from achieving brilliant business results. Seeing Anil’s name following closely, Mukesh couldn’t figure out whether he should be happy or annoyed for a while.
The family broke up. The lawsuit between the
two lasted for a year.
Mukesh looked innocent. He explained to the media that he did not mean to oppose his brother. He really liked the telecommunications industry and wanted to make a difference in this industry. When he split up five years ago, he did not get the telecommunications industry, but the traditional oil industry. He was unwilling. Although oil was the most profitable industry at that time, the development of the oil industry depended on resources. If the resources were exhausted, the huge industry would not be able to achieve long-term sustainable development. The telecommunications industry is catering to the rapid development of the Internet, catering to the trend of the times, and has a broader development space. Compared with the oil industry, which is full of problems, an industry with strong development potential such as the telecommunications industry is what his heart desires.
Mukesh also said that the main reason why he signed the “non-competition agreement” was that he did not want to embarrass his mother. His father was gone, and his mother was his closest relative. In addition, he did not want to turn against his younger brother because of his property, but these few Nian’s younger brother’s communication business has not really become bigger and stronger, and it has failed his patience.
Under Mukesh, he won the support of several judges who unanimously ruled that the “non-compete agreement” signed by the Ambani brothers was invalid.
At this point, Mukesh can finally show his strength in the communication industry, and he soon completed the layout of entering the telecommunications industry: in 2010, Mukesh acquired a telecommunications company; in 2013, he built a national telecommunications network; in 2015, Mukesh founded the telecommunications company Reliance Jio, followed by step-by-step, opening the 4G network business in 2016.
Unlike Anil’s high fees, Mukesh adopted a friendly charging policy, and as a result, he gained 100 million users in just one year. A large number of users were poached by Mukesh, and Anil had to reduce the price, but netizens did not buy it at all, and they turned to Mukesh one after another.
Barely surviving into 2018, Anil’s company went from bad to worse and he had to sell assets to quell investor fears of mounting debt at some of his companies, sending the company’s share price further down. In addition, Anil learned from Mukesh’s method of portfolio investment, and he cooperated with the military to establish Reliance Naval Engineering Company and Reliance Defense Company in succession.
But Anil miscalculated. The Reliance Naval Engineering Company accepted an order to manufacture ships for the Indian Navy. As a result, the Indian Navy changed its mind and did not want to continue to implement this unsustainable amphibious landing ship program. Therefore, the share price of the Naval Engineering Company fell sharply and had to change hands. And Reliance Defence has also come under scrutiny after France and India’s $8.7 billion Rafale fighter talks fell through. After successive investment failures, Anil suffered heavy losses.
Compared with Anil’s decline, Mukesh’s situation is much better. With 4G and 5G services, his personal wealth has grown rapidly, and he has surpassed Jack Ma to become the richest man in Asia. In desperation, Anil had to put down his face, hoping that Mukesh would save himself once on the basis of his kinship.
Anil had all the good things to say, but Mukesh was still reluctant to borrow money. Anil turned to his mother as a lobbyist again, and Mukesh still had an irrelevant attitude. Just when Anil was extremely depressed, Mukesh took the initiative to find Anil: “I can lend you money, but…” Before Mukesh finished speaking, he directly handed an agreement to Anil. It turned out to be an agreement to acquire Anil’s assets.
Anil’s heart was bleeding, Mukesh didn’t want to help himself, he was under fire. However, if Anil does not accept Mukesh’s request, he will have no chance of turning over. As soon as Anil gritted his teeth, the company, which had assets of hundreds of millions of dollars, received Mukesh’s “help” of $80 million.
Like opening a Pandora’s box, “transferring” the company to Mukesh became Anil’s life-saving straw. In this way, Mukesh’s assets expanded rapidly. On his wife Nita’s 44th birthday, he spent $59 million to customize an Airbus 319 luxury jet as a birthday present for his wife. Soon he also spent $1 billion to build a 27-storey mansion in Mumbai, with 3 helicopter platforms, garages on the 1st to 6th floors, and a whole sky garden.
In early November 2018, Mukesh’s daughter Isa got married. The groom was your son Anand, and his father was the founder of India’s Pirama Group. The wedding cost more than $700 million, with multiple charter planes and more than 1,000 luxury vehicles transporting guests, and about 5,100 guests attended the pre-wedding ceremony, which lasted three months before and after the wedding.
Seeing Mukesh showing off his wealth in a high profile, Anil is not far behind. He raised 300 million US dollars to buy the yacht, and he continued to accept media interviews and publish photos of himself and the yacht in newspapers. The photo is the only proof that Anil was once a well-known billionaire. Not long ago, news broke that Anil owed three Chinese banks US$700 million and was unable to repay, and the famous billionaire finally became a notorious billionaire “negator”.
Today, the legend of Mukesh and Anil continues, one is the richest man in Asia, with assets of $84.5 billion, and the other is heavily in debt, with arrears reaching $3 billion. What is certain is that Mukesh will never lend a helping hand to his younger brother, so that even the Indian people can’t stand it anymore. They shouted to Mukesh: Don’t find out that wealth cannot be taken away until the end of your life. , Family affection and love can comfort people for a lifetime, and you don’t have to wait until the end of your life to regret it.
