Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Mukesh Ambani elected RIL chairman

Mukesh Ambani was elected Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited while younger brother Anil was elected Vice-Chairman and MD at the company's board meeting held in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Both the elections were unanimous, a company spokesperson said, adding this was the first board meeting of the country's biggest industrial conglomerate in the private sector after group patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani's demise on July 6 this year.

The Reliance group is India's largest industrial conglomerate and has a stake in textiles, synthetic fibers, petrochemicals, oil and gas financial services power and telecom sectors.

It has the fifth largest refinery in the world at Jamnagar, Gujarat and is India's largest private sector company in terms of sales. The group's revenues for 2001-02 were $13.2 billion.

Mukesh and Anil had been working with Dhirubhai in the group for the last 20 years.

"Mukesh and Anil have the required experience and they run the company now. Since his first stroke, Dhirubhai had handed over the reins to them and they have been managing the company very capably," a senior company official said.

Mukesh, who has a Masters in Business Administration from Stanford University, handles technology, strategy and operations, while Anil, a former alumni of the Wharton Business School, is the public face of the company and looks at all matters financial.

The following is the profile of the Mukesh D Ambani, the new Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited.

Birthplace: Mumbai, India

Date of Birth: April 19, 1957

Education:
Bachelor of Chemical Engineering, University of Bombay.
MBA from Stanford University, USA.

Career:

• Joined Reliance in 1981 and initiated Reliance's backward integration from textiles into polyester fibres and further into petrochemicals.
• In this process, he directed the creation of 51 new, world-class manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies that have raised Reliance's manufacturing capacities from less than a million tones to 9 million tonnes per year.
• Credited with having brought about financial innovations in the Indian capital markets.
• Pioneered India's first forays into overseas capital markets with international public offerings of global depository receipts, convertibles and bonds.
• Directed Reliance in its efforts to raise, since 1991, around $2 billion from overseas financial markets; with a 100-year Yankee bond issue in January 1997 being the high point.
• Directed and led the creation of the world's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar, India, with a capacity of 540,000 barrels per day integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, port and related infrastructure, at an investment of Rs 250 billion.
• With an investment of over Rs 360 billion in petroleum refining, petrochemicals, power generation, telecommunication services and a port terminal in a three-year time frame, has steered the Reliance Group to its current status as India's leading textiles-petroleum-petrochemicals-power-telecom player.

Member:

• Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Trade and Industry, Government of India.
• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India.
• Board of Governors of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.
• Advisory Council of the Indian Bank's Association.
• Chairman, Board of Trustees of The Indian Institute of Software Engineering.

Achievements:

• Rated as one of 'India's Most Admired CEOs' for the fourth consecutive year in the Business Barons-Taylor Nelson Sofres-Mode Survey, July 2002, and also emerged as one of the Super Six world class Indian CEOs.
• Recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award - 2000, September 2000.
• Honoured by University Department of Chemical Technology, University of Bombay as 'Distinguished Alumnus of the Decade', December 1999.
• Conferred the 'Businessman of the year 1997' award by India's leading business magazine Business India, December 1997.
• Recognised as 'Global Leader for Tomorrow' in 1994 by the World Economic Forum, Switzerland.
• Named in Time's roster of young leaders for the new millennium' by Time magazine, December 1994.

Marital Status: Married to Nita. Has three children: Akash, Isha and Anant.

Directorships: Reliance Industries Ltd, Reliance Petroleum Ltd and Reliance Europe Ltd.

Chairman of Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd, too.

Major group companies: Reliance Industries Limited, Reliance Petroleum Limited. These are India's top two private sector companies.

Description of group's business: The Reliance Group, founded by Dhirubhai H Ambani (1932-2002), is India's largest business house with total revenues of Rs 600 billion ($12.3 billion), cash flow of over Rs 75 billion ($1.5 billion), net profit of over Rs 46 billion ($950 million) and exports of Rs 112 billion ($2.3 billion).

The group has total assets of Rs 600 billion. Its activities span petrochemicals, synthetic fibres, fibre intermediates, textiles, oil & gas, financial services, refining & marketing, power, insurance, telecom and infocom initiatives.

Reliance emerged as India's Most Admired Business House, for the second successive year in a Taylor Nelson Sofres-Mode (TNS-Mode) survey for 2002.

ALSO READ:
Reliance Industries Q1 net up 16.50%
Reliance Petro Q1 net up by 5.26%
Dhirubhai Ambani: End of an era
More Money Headlines