Is R. 'Sesh' Seshasayee on his way
out at Ashok Leyland? Neither Seshasayee nor the company would comment,
but BT learns that the 59-year-old CEO of the Chennai-based commercial
vehicle manufacturer may have decided to call it a day after spending
31 years with it-the last 10 as its top man. Another source says
that Sesh won't be retiring immediately but only in 2009 when his
contract expires. Considered one of India's finest executives, Sesh
has been responsible for turning a plain vanilla truck and bus manufacturer
into a global player, with acquisitions in the Czech Republic and
a manufacturing unit in Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE. Over the last
few years, Sesh emerged as an industry champ, first as the President
of SIAM, and then of top industry lobby, CII. COO Vinod Dasari,
who joined Leyland from Cummins, is tipped to be the successor.
 Power
Dip
Weeks
after L. Madhusudhan Rao stunned power sector watchers
by bagging the ultra-mega power project at Sasan, he was in for
some surprise himself. The Bermuda-registered partner, Globeleq,
that Rao's company Lanco Infratech had teamed up with to bid for
the 4,000 mega Watt project (cost: Rs 16,000 crore), seemed to
want out. However, Rao, 40, says he is not surprised. "Globeleq,
being more of a fund, has investments in a lot of power projects
around the world and it is doing an asset sale at the moment.
This is a normal process as they need to do that and re-invest,"
says the Hyderabad-based Rao. He adds this does not mean they
are exiting Sasan. Therefore, there will be no impact on the project
and that Lanco will "keep it alive". It would be a pity if things
unravelled. Lanco's aggressive bid (a 'levelised' tariff of just
Rs 1.19 per unit) was taken as a vote of confidence in a sector
dogged by power theft and bankrupt state electricity boards.
Purple Patch
Anil Ambani
seems to have hit a purple patch in February. In fact, he had
three reasons to celebrate on the second day of the month-it was
his 15th wedding anniversary; but that isn't why he's being featured
here. That day, his flagship Reliance Communications crossed the
magical Rs 1,00,000-crore mark in market capitalisation, becoming,
in the process, the seventh Indian company to do so. That was
also the day when it emerged that Reliance Mutual Fund had leapfrogged
to the pole position in the Indian MF industry with assets under
management of Rs 39,019.94 crore, well ahead of second-placed
UTI MF's corpus of Rs 37,535.07 crore. The younger Ambani, 47,
who is also in the race for acquiring Hutchison Essar, must be
hoping that his lucky streak continues at least for the rest of
this year.
 Wary
Banker
First
it was HDFC's Deepak Parekh who sounded the fog horn over soaring
real estate prices. Now, it's another industry heavy weight, ICICI
Bank MD & CEO, K.V. Kamath, who is voicing his concern.
"We feel the property market has overheated in select cities,"
Kamath, 59, told a newswire. As a result, he said, his bank had
become selective about disbursing home loans. That's worth taking
seriously. After all, ICICI Bank has been the most aggressive
player in the retail loans market, with over Rs 50,000 crore locked
up in retail mortgages. Let us not wish for a real estate crash,
but hope that Kamath's caution helps cool the frenzy in the market.
Action Time
 After
sitting tight for five months following his first investment in
Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Blackstone India's Chairman & Managing
Director, Akhil Gupta, seems to have developed a serious
taste for media firms. To start with, he has invested $275 million
(Rs 1,237.5 crore) in Ramoji Rao's Ushodaya Enterprises, which
owns Eenadu, ETV and Ramoji Rao Film City, valuing the Hyderabad-based
group at over $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore). There's also talk of
Gupta, 54, mulling investment in NDTV Networks. "I would not like
to comment on it, but you are free to speculate," he says, helpfully.
But he does say that his third investment will also be a privately-held
company with a strong growth plan. "The investment could be between
$20 million and $2 billion," he says. Well, this is Blackstone
after all.
 Winds
of Change
For
Tulsi Tanti, being global doesn't mean only global acquisitions.
It also means giving his wind energy business a global face. Ergo,
less than a year after his wind power company Suzlon Energy purchased
Belgium-based Hansen Transmission for Rs 2,511 crore, Tanti, 43,
has tapped GE Consumer & Industrial CEO and President (for EMEA),
Andre Horbach, as the CEO of Suzlon's global operations. Horbach
will be based out of Suzlon's new group management office in Amsterdam.
Evidently, Tanti is in a mood to professionalise his Pune-based
company in a big way, and is looking to hire a President for the
India operations. But this post is likely to be filled by an Indian.
With Rs 35,000 crore in Suzlon market cap, of which his share
is worth Rs 2,800 crore, Tanti has realised that it pays to differentiate
between ownership and management.
-Contributed by Anand Adhikari,
Venkatesha Babu, E. Kumar Sharma and Pallavi Srivastava
|
