Some people lose to win. They have their own strategies in place to deal with a deal, need arising pulling out at the right moment. If you have any doubt, ask the maverick brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh.
In March this year, the duo embarked on a Singapore shopping binge and bought a stake in Parkway Holdings with a view to acquiring its control. Khazanah, a Malaysian firm with a little over 23 per cent stake in Parkway, smelt a rat.
The two Bright Brothers got locked in a heavy-dose bidding race with Khazanah. In the end, Khazanah walked away with Parkway.
The brothers collected Rs 350 crore in the bargain. That is the difference between the price at which they picked up the stake in Parkway and then sold it to the Malaysian firm, all in a matter of less than four months. Yet another master stroke by the Singhs, two years after their dramatic sale of Ranbaxy to Daichii of Japan.
Now the Singh brothers have all the time, inclination and a bigger war chest to look around for companies in their quest for a pan-Asian presence. Only the sick would ever say the Singhs did not play their cards well!
Eminent jurist the late Nani Palkhivala was fond of saying that he knew of no other shrewd business community in India than the Jains of Palanpur, who bought rough diamonds from a people noted for their parsimony and then sold the stuff back to them at a profit after cutting and polishing the gems.
Well, our businessmen have gone a long way. Our liberalized economy has spawned a whole new breed of entrepreneurs, smart and astute. They have given us a whole lot of success stories in the international business arena. They have proved their mettle through calculated sales, mergers and acquisitions and new joint ventures.
In the last two decades, Indian industry has undergone a total transformation, though in the process some well known companies had indeed gone under. That’s inevitable as the corporate sector evolved, removed as it is from suffocating controls under the old dispensation.
Take any product – from ordinary paper clips and pins to cell phones and cars – and see the choice we have before us now.
But sibling rivalry and family feuds have cast a long shadow over sections of Indian industry. The Ambani brothers too were victims, but fortunately they made up. There are many others from our industrial families who still spend most of their time in courtrooms instead of board rooms.
In this milieu, the Singhs are a class apart. They are young, well educated and energetic, glued to each other and they lend a new orientation to entrepreneurship. They are not the ones to rest on their oars, you bet. It will be interesting to watch their moves. Who knows what is on their shopping list next?
