The warring siblings, Mukesh, 53, and Anil, 51, buried the hatchet in May on a venomous feud arising from the division of the huge conglomerate left by their rags-to-riches father Dhirubhai, who died in 2002 without a will.
“They clearly want to move on,” said Deepak Pareek, an oil analyst with Mumbai’s Angel Broking.
The original division of spoils between the two brothers had seen Mukesh keep the oil, gas and petrochemicals businesses of the group’s flagship Reliance Industries, India’s largest private company.
Anil got Reliance Energy, one of India’s largest power utility firms, the phone company Reliance Communications and the financial services arm, Reliance Capital.
The May truce saw them tear up a non-competition pact that had prevented them from entering the same sectors - a move that the brothers said would provide greater “operational and financial” flexibility to their respective groups.
Mukesh, who is in a vastly stronger financial position with a personal fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $29 billion, has announced what he calls “mega-expansion” plans into telecom and banking - high-growth areas in India that had hitherto been Anil’s turf.
The decision to bring down the curtain on their feud came weeks after the Indian Supreme Court ruled in favour of Mukesh in a pricing battle with Anil over supplies from the nation’s largest gas find.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 8th, 2010.
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