Year of big gains and family feuds

2004: Chinese year of the Monkey. Forecast: A great year for business but the presence of conflicting elements, wood and metal, will cause some clashes. Well, as far as corporate India is concerned, this could as well been the year of "big gains and bickering families".

Topping the list of dysfunctional families are the Ambanis with their "ownership issues in the private domain".

Anil Ambani takes on big brother Mukesh and the Reliance Industries board, fighting for control over the Rs 99,000 crore empire. As far as family dramas go, this would definitely top the TRP charts. At the end of the year, the Reliance board sat silently through a four-hour meeting, and, despite Anil's vitriolic outbursts, voted with Mukesh.

What next? There is talk about Anil filing a court case, of Mukesh loosening up, of a Bajaj family-style mediation, but nobody knows. So far, it has been advantage Mukesh and the three ways in which this one could end -- Anil loses, Anil loses a lot more and Anil loses everything -- have been discussed by the chattereti to death.

That's the case where the family patriarch left no will. In the east, a will has kept everyone occupied. Priyamvada Birla made some people very unhappy by snubbing her relatives -- even her favourite nephew -- and left her late husband MP Birla's Rs 5,000 crore assets to chartered accountant RS Lodha.

In the south, TPG Nambiar, the big daddy of the BPL group, thinks his son-in-law is up to no good and has sued Rajeev Chandrashekar over the ownership of BPL Communications.

Extracurricular activities apart, corporate India was busy minting money all through 2004 like never before. Net profits vaulted an impressive 45 per cent in the March-September half year; this comes over a 50 per cent growth in the first half of the last financial year. Revenues soared 20 per cent this time around.

There was not a single dull moment in 2004, and the Sensex danced to an erratic beat. Larsen and Toubro (L&T) gracefully handed over its cement business to the AV Birla group and there you have UltraTech -- same cement, new bag.

Tata Consultancy Services made a shining debut on the bourses, got 7.7 times the money it wanted in India's first $1 billion issue. This left the rich Tata group even richer as Tata group companies were rewarded generously for their patience.

The other $1 billion dollar debut this year by National Thermal Power Corporation also caused a stir in the markets with the issue being oversubscribed like crazy.

This was also the year of overseas acquisitions. Tata Motors went to South Korea and bought Daewoo Commercial Vehicle, Mahindra & Mahindra embraced Jiangling Tractor Company, Tata Steel sang along with the Singaporean NatSteel, while Patni went to the US to acquire Cymbal Corporation in the biggest overseas acquisition by an Indian IT company.

All that glittered was not gold as steel and other base metals had their day in the spotlight. The global steel industry registered record high prices. India is currently poised for high growth in the sector. Global shortage of iron saw companies like BHP-Billiton, Posco, Vedanta and Mitsui scampering to the mineral-rich state of Orissa to set up shop.

2005. Chinese year of the chicken. Wood and metal continue to dominate, which means the disputes that began in 2004 could spill into the new year. But only a few will complain if the industry sustains its run of luck.