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| A.K. PURWAR: Man on a mission |
Tike
a man possessed, A.K. Purwar came to his new job with a resolution.
''Technology, credit quality, and retail (are) going to be my three
priorities,'' the State Bank of India's Chairman told BT recently.
And from what we hear, Purwar is attacking item No. 2 (credit quality)
with a vengeance. The bank, India's largest, is believed to have
sent the maximum number of notices (1,500 at last count) to defaulters
for recovery of about Rs 1,500 crore in past dues. Purwar, who's
done a stint as the CEO of SBI in Tokyo, says: ''I have seen the
banks and economies face problems because of bad quality of assets,
and that's why I am extra jittery about the asset quality.'' Purwar
is exploring all kinds of options to bring in the elusive debtors.
Compromise settlements, loan reschedulement, or write-offs are strategies
he hopes to adopt. Needless to say, his Japan experience—that
country's banking system is in a mess-will come in handy. That probably
also explains why the SBI stock has been moving up on Dalal Street.
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| GAUTAM ADANI: Defensive mode |
High Drama
Corporate wrangles can often take surprising twists.
Ask Gautam Adani, Chairman, Adani Group. Last fortnight,
Adani-according to his version-was in the capital to meet Pavan
Sachdeva of ms Shoes infame over a Rs 5-crore cheating case slapped
on him by the latter. While Sachdeva did not show up, Adani (who
had earlier not responded to court summons) was questioned and held
at a city police station, until his lawyers rescued him. Now, Adani
has filed a petition ''for cancelling the summons''.
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| JASWANT SINGH: Breaking away from tradition |
Virtual FM
Once an army man always an army man? So it
seems-at least in the case of fm Jaswant Singh, who's decided
not to continue with his ministry's decade-old tradition of pre-budget
meetings with industrialists, economists and business editors. ''The
idea,'' Singh says, "is to encourage the widest possible debate
on them, not simply to have the hype three months before the event.''
Of debate, there's been plenty already. The Kelkar Committee Report
has been discussed widely, and the fm has also done a mid-year review,
both of which are available on the ministry's website. The lobbyists,
however, are fuming.
Question Of Image
Vijay Mallya hates the 'liquor baron'
tag. He said as much at the Press Club in Mumbai last fortnight,
pointing to his UB Group's other businesses. But that statement
came just days after UB acquired an 85 per cent stake in Triumph
Distilleries, a Deepak Roy company that bought the Gilbey's brand
of whiskey from UDV India. Meanwhile, the ED has appealed for reopening
a case against him for fera violations ($3 million allegedly remitted
in 1995, for sponsoring Benetton Formula One Team). The industrialist-turned-spiritualist-turned-politician,
it seems, will have to try harder for an image makeover.
Going Global
What is it about Indian melodrama that enthralls
global audience? We may never quite figure that out, and one lady
who wouldn't mind if that remained a mystery either is Ekta Kapoor
of Balaji Telefilms. The 26-year-old Creative Director of the
company has signed a Rs 1.5-crore deal with pt Menara Media Sakti
of Indonesia to sell rights to one thousand episodes of her Hindi
serials. PT Menara's rights will be restricted to one time telecast,
plus one repeat telecast. Thereafter, the rights will revert to
Balaji. Says Kapoor: ''There is huge demand for our serials (abroad),
because of our quality programming.'' Good show, either way.
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| BILL GATES: Making concessions |
Open, Sesame
If Bill Gates is the world's richest
man with $34 billion in net worth, it's because of the stranglehold
his company Microsoft has on the market for desktop operating system.
The software czar, however, is beginning to feel the heat from rival
open source camps-especially Linux. Although the India arm wouldn't
confirm or deny it, Gates is said to have agreed to share part of
the .Net platform source code with state governments in India. That's,
of course, an attempt to keep rival Linux at bay. In October this
year, the government had announced a new initiative to move the
entire country to Linux as the "platform of choice". Then Gates
and his $400 million happened in November. During his four-day visit,
he signed an MoU with Karnataka to base its "Bangalore One" initiative
on the .Net platform. The new concession is an attempt to win over
more states. It's tough when you have everything to lose.
-contributed by Roshni Jayakar, Moinak
Mitra, Shilpa Nayak & Ashish Gupta
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