For India Inc, 2013 is a year it would like to forget fast.
Chief executives officers hope that with a new government in place next year, the economy will bounce back.
They felt there would be lesser run-ins with investigative agencies after the new government takes charge.
Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla will be busy fighting cases related to coal block allocations, as the Central Bureau of Investigation had filed a case against him and his group firm Hindalco.
Birla, 46, who built his business empire by acquiring companies globally and at home, is investing more abroad, including in Novelis expansion, as the sentiment turns negative in India, say insiders.
While Birla is staring at an investigation, a Delhi trial court will soon decide whether to convict Ravi Ruia, 64, and Anshuman Ruia, 42, of the Essar group and Gautam Doshi of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group in the 2G telecom spectrum scam.
Though the two groups have denied any wrongdoing, the spectrum scandal has singed them in terms of brand identity and questions over their adherence to corporate governance.
A lot will also depend on whether Anil Ambani, 54, will be given a banking licence by the Reserve Bank of India next year.
His elder brother Mukesh Ambani, 56, chairman of Reliance Industries, will be taking on the petrolium ministry to secure a better price for natural gas from the company’s KG-D6 blocks off the Andhra coast.
Though the Cabinet has doubled the gas price from $4.2 a unit to $8.4 a unit, Ambani has said it’s not enough.
At the same time, the oil ministry and the Comptroller and Auditor General aren’t happy with the “inflated” expenditure incurred by Reliance Industries in its KG-D6 block, which reduces the government’s profit share. The matter is under arbitration.
But Mukesh has a lot to hope for as well.
By next year, he will launch the much-delayed fourth generation-based
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