Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, who engineered the
acquisition of Hutch-Essar in India, has accused unsuccessful rival bidders of trying to derail the deal and sought transparency from Indian regulators in M&A approvals.
"One day I would hear that some big business house called some minister attempting to crater the deal. The billionaire losers' club was trying to unwind the deal," Sarin, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, told a Global IIT conference over the weekend in Silicon Valley.
"I have to tell you, I quite didn't expect that. I didn't expect the good and great of India to be calling Cabinet secretaries, ministers, to say, 'You have to unwind this deal, because