Library of Congress
"Dhirubhai Ambani's life is a rags-to-riches story, from Bombay's crowded pavements and bazaars to the city's extravagantly wealthy social circles where business tycoons, stockmarket speculators, smugglers, politicians and Hindi film stars mingle, make money, make and break marriages and carry out prolonged feuds-sometimes violent, often histrionic."--BOOK JACKET. "Until the arrival of Ambani, India's big business scene was dominated by a few industrial houses from British times. In just 26 years since its foundation, Ambani's Reliance group has risen to rival these houses. By 1995 the group had 2.6 million investors."--BOOK JACKET. "Along with the dramatic expansion of the Reliance Group have come intricate political connections, a whole raft of corruption charges and a rollercoaster of booms and crashes for Ambani and his company. This study shows how capitalism emerges by fair means and foul in the new industrial countries of the Third World, and is one of very few studies of Asian or Third World tycoons."--BOOK JACKET.
ISBN-10: 1864484683
ISBN-13: 978-1864484687
The book had been made "out of stock" by people close to the legendary man & is quoted at "EUR 438,85" at amazone.com
Someone got hold of a softcopy and reading through it. Extract follows:
Quoted from the book. Comment are mine & in italics.
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First - Opportunity money from thin air!
Suddenly Govt of Yemen finds that RIAL started to go out of circulation!
They trace disappearing coins south to Port of ADEN where Dhirubhai had open order to buy as many rials as possible. He was melting them and selling them in london. As Rial coins were made of Silver and after melting they had profit potential for him! he made 100000 rupees in 3 months at that point of time!
Comment: They had been circulating story of an Indian selling petrol at a Pump in Aden.
He changed the accounting year 4 times in 15 years.
Example: you may follow accounting year from March to march and the suddenly you follow Jan - Dec. Guess why?
Well by doing so he was able to eliminate the losing months from balance sheet and spruce it up to show profits!
Comment: Government made "March ending" compulsory for everybody & my father's proprietory firm ending on 'Auspious Ratha Jatra' had to comply. When Ambani kept changing , none question him.
He always made sure Reliance share price grew every year to attract more and more investors.
He did that by forming 15 NRI companies who use to invest in Reliance!
He even killed a bear Cartel attack from Kolkatta traders on Reliance share, by buying aggressively against them, thus in end making the cartel of traders bankrupt.
From there he became messiah of common man.
Comment : Issue after issue of convertible debentures and non-convertible debentures by Reliance and others made many "lakhpati" all over India.
UTI Investments Chief at that point of time and Dhirubhai made friends and UTI invested major in Reliance and kept on doing so time to time. This made both go strong in time to time benefiting each other!
He was the one who launched debenture later converted to shares, which mean by one stroke you can change the Debt into equity and in turn make your balance sheet look healthy, off go the Interest payments!
Comment: This procedure got halted by a Central government banning NCD to equity just before a scheduled board meeting.
Once a gujrati newspaper wrote in negative aspect for reliance. When dhirbhai came to know this, the marketing budget was shelved for that newspaper. This led to loss of 600000/- every month at that point of time for them.
As a damage control guy wrote positive next month and got his budget back.
So our king was controlling the media too!
