Close to $18 billion that Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail mopped up from a slew of private equity transactions in 2020 has pushed up the money inflows through this route by 108 per cent to $33.8 billion, according to an industry report. As per the data collated by Refinitiv, private equity investments increased 108 per cent in 2020 over the previous year, with the number of deals jumping from 665 in 2019 to 791 in 2020 at $33.8 billion, despite the pandemic. In 2019, total PE deals stood at $16.2 billion. Most of the fund inflows were in the third quarter, fetching $24 billion, which, however, tapered off in Q4 to just about $4.57 billion, as per the data from the agency that tracks financial transactions at a global level.
With an epic battle of billionaires for supremacy in one of the world's most prolific markets and a pandemic-propelled surge in online shopping in the background, India's nearly trillion-dollar retail market is hoping to touch 85 per cent of the pre-COVID business in the first half of the New Year. In a year when the COVID-19 carnage ripped apart the retail business, circa 2020 will best go down for the unravelling of the war between Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani for pre-eminence in the booming market that is estimated to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. It all started with Ambani's Reliance Industries agreeing in August to buy assets of the nation's second-largest retailer for Rs 24,713 crore, just a year after Bezos' Amazon purchased an indirect stake in the indebted Future Retail.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has seen pre-tax profit recover to pre-pandemic levels on the back of continued growth in consumer businesses, Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom behemoth on Friday reported a 0.7 per cent Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax and depreciation and amortisation) growth for the quarter ended December 31, 2020, compared with the corresponding quarter in the previous year. "A strong performance in digital services and retail segments underpinned the improvement in consolidated earnings, a credit positive," Moody's said commenting on the earnings. Continued growth in earnings combined with the company's strong balance sheet with zero net debt on a reported basis will keep Reliance's credit metrics strong for its Baa2 rating over the next 12-18 months, it said.
American chip behemoth Nvidia Corp and India's retail-to-refining giant Reliance Industries on Thursday unveiled their goal to build a formidable AI computing infrastructure in the country. Highlighting the tie-up, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, made a broader appeal: India should focus on "manufacturing" AI, rather than racing to build semiconductor fabs. As part of this collaboration, Nvidia will reportedly supply its Blackwell AI processors to power Reliance's one-gigawatt data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
FB deal puts RIL on course to be debt-free next year; Reliance Retail biggest gainer from WhatsApp, JioMart arrangement.
Manish Tiwary plans to take up a new role at another firm.
Stock market investors became richer by a whopping Rs 77.66 lakh crore in 2024, helped by an overall optimistic trend in equities, where the BSE Sensex surged over 8 per cent. Analysts said the year witnessed a tug of war between the bulls and bears marked by volatility but, despite the uncertainties around the world, the Indian markets sustained the pressure and delivered impressive returns.
The changes in the domestic and global economy following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic are altering the corporate profit league table in India. Reliance Industries (RIL), which topped the India Inc profit chart for more than a decade, lost out to State Bank of India (SBI) in the 2023-24 (FY24) April-June quarter (first quarter, or Q1). India's biggest lender reported a consolidated net profit (adjusted for exceptional gains and losses) of Rs 66,860 crore during the trailing 12-month (TTM) ended in June this year, ahead of RIL's TTM adjusted net profit of Rs 64,758 crore in the quarter.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd climbed two spots to No. 53 on Forbes' latest Global 2000 list of public companies worldwide. Forbes Global 2000 ranks the largest companies in the world using four metrics: sales, profits, assets and market value, Forbes said releasing the 2022 ranking of the world's top 2,000 companies. Reliance is the top-ranked Indian firm on the list, followed by State Bank of India at No. 105, HDFC Bank at No. 153 and ICICI Bank at No. 204.
Future Enterprises Ltd (FEL) on Tuesday said it has defaulted on payment of Rs 19.16 crore to Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank and Union Bank of India under the one-time restructuring plan. This is the second default by FEL this month. The due date for payment of Rs 19.16 crore was March 28, FEL said in a regulatory filing.
Legal experts explain the implications of the latest twist in the Amazon-Reliance battle for billion-plus consumers' purse.
The development of the constitution of the tribunal comes at a time when the Delhi high court in December 2020 refused to restrain Amazon from interfering in Future Retail's deal with Reliance Retail by writing to statutory authorities.
While Amazon is expected to approach either Mumbai or Delhi high court to enforce the interim order of SIAC, the Future Group, too, is likely to challenge the order. Legal experts also expect the Reliance group to expedite the process for regulatory clearances in the deal.
Mukesh Ambani is stringing in new partnerships within the Reliance ecosystem with the best in global business -- from Facebook, Google and Microsoft to umpteen sovereign wealth funds and a soon-to-be-declared strategic partner in a big global retailer, notes Shailesh Dobhal.
Future Retail Ltd (FRL) on Monday said the Delhi high court has ruled that statutory authorities cannot be restrained from acting in accordance with law and stayed a previous order on status quo of its Rs 24,713 crore deal with Reliance. Updating stock exchanges about the court ruling, FRL said a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh has stayed the operation and effect of order passed by single Judge J R Midha on February 2. "...inter alia, for the prima facie reason that the company is not a party to the Shareholders Agreement dated August 22, 2019 executed between Amazon, Future Coupons Private Limited and the Promoters of FRL, under which arbitration was initiated by Amazon in Singapore," FRL said.
Experts say Biyani will now become a contract manufacturer of fashion and FMCG products, with the Reliance group being one of his customers.
Mukesh Ambani has resigned from the board of his group's telecom arm, Reliance Jio and handed over the reins of the company to elder son Akash, a step seen as succession planning by the 65-year old billionaire. In a stock exchange filing, Reliance Jio Infocomm said the company's board at a meeting on June 27, "approved the appointment of Akash M Ambani, non-executive director, as chairman of the board of directors of the company." This comes after his father resigned with effect from close of working hours on June 27, it said.
Its trajectory in telecom is well known but now it is pushing for a similar leap into the ranks of the top players in its other businesses: media and entertainment, e-commerce, a series of online businesses ranging from health to education, and retail.
Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani drew nil salary from his oil-to-telecom-and-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries for the fourth straight year in a row while his children earned a sitting fee and a commission for being on the board of India's most valuable company. Ambani, 67, had capped his annual remuneration at Rs 15 crore from financial year 2008-09 (April 2008 to March 2009) to 2019-20 (FY20); and since FY21, he opted to forego his salary, due to COVID-19 pandemic, until the company and all its businesses were fully back to their earnings potential.
Investor confidence in unlisted shares was shaken after recent developments that saw online drugstore PharmEasy issuing new shares in a rights issue at a 90 per cent discount to its previous valuations and Reliance Retail's move to buy back and cancel shares held by public investors. Both stocks were, at one time, very popular in the unlisted market, with canny investors cornering them with the objective of benefiting from their listing. "Since investors have suffered losses on both counts, they will be careful when it comes to dealing in shares of unlisted companies," observes a broker dealing in unlisted shares, adding that there will be some rationality to the pricing.
Reliance Industries on Friday reported more than doubling of its March quarter net profit to Rs 13,227 crore as improvement in petrochemical and consumer business countered continued weakness in refining business.
Amazon has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Delhi high court's division bench order that had vacated a stay on Kishore Biyani-led Future Group proceeding with its Rs 24,713 crore asset sale to Reliance Industries. Amazon, in the petition, sought a stay on the March 22 order of the division bench, terming it "illegal", "random", "inequitable and unfair". On March 22, a division bench of the Delhi high court had granted Future a reprieve from a March 18 single-judge order that restrained it from taking any steps to sell assets to Reliance.
E-commerce major Amazon has moved the Supreme Court in a bid to block Future group's Rs 24,713-crore deal with Reliance, according to sources.
A fall in crude oil price and Aramco's $75 billion annual dividend commitment may have delayed Saudi company picking a stake in Reliance Industries Ltd's oil-to-chemical unit (O2C), research firm Jefferies said. Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani had in August 2019 announced talks for the sale of a 20 per cent stake in the O2C business, which comprises its twin oil refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat and petrochemical assets, to the world's largest oil exporter. The deal was to conclude by March 2020 but has been delayed for reasons not disclosed by either company.
The week's losses wiped out investor wealth worth Rs 18.43 trillion, with the total market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms now at Rs 441 trillion.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries on Saturday said it will raise as much as $5 billion in foreign currency-denominated bonds and use the proceeds to retire existing borrowings. In a stock exchange filing, the company said the Finance Committee of the company board at its meeting on Saturday approved a "proposal for issuance of senior unsecured US Dollar-denominated fixed-rate notes from time to time, for an aggregate amount up to $5 billion, in one or more tranches".
Reliance Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 7 per cent drop in its June quarter net profit as retail business got hit by the second wave of COVID infections.
The premium mall, Jio World Drive (JWD), is spread across an area of 17.5 acre and it will be Mumbai's first rooftop Jio drive-in Theatre which will be operated by PVR. JWD will house only premium international and Indian brands.
Russia's state-owned oil firm Rosneft has agreed to supply up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to Indian upstream oil and gas major Reliance Industries (RIL) in the largest-ever energy deal between the two countries, Reuters reported on Thursday. The 10-year agreement amounts to 0.5 per cent of global oil supply and is valued at roughly $13 billion per year at current prices, it said.
India Inc continued to grapple with muted revenue growth in the September 2024 quarter (Q2FY25) and witnessed a decline in margins and profits. The headwinds were especially severe for non-financial companies, while banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) firms significantly outpaced the rest of the corporate sector. The total profit of 1,353 listed companies that have released their Q2FY25 results thus far dropped by 0.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) - the first cumulative earnings decline in eight quarters.
From the Sensex pack, Adani Ports & Special Economic Zones, Mahindra & Mahindra, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Larsen & Toubro, NTPC, State Bank of India, UltraTech Cement and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the major gainers. In contrast, Tata Steel, Titan, Bajaj Finserv, JSW Steel, Bajaj Finance, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services were among the laggards.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Adani-Total Gas Ltd and Shell were among the 29 companies that bid and bought natural gas to be produced from the deepest field in the KG-D6 block of Reliance Industries Ltd and bp, sources said. IOC walked away with almost half of the 6 million standard cubic meters per day of gas sold in an e-auction on Wednesday while state-owned gas utility GAIL bought 0.7 mmscmd, Adani-Total Gas Ltd 0.4 mmscmd, Shell 0.5 mmscmd, GSPC 0.25 mmscmd and IGS another 0.5 mmscmd, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. Reliance-bp on Wednesday held an e-auction for sale of gas from the MJ field in their eastern offshore KG-D6 block after incorporating the government's new marketing rules to give CNG-selling city gas companies first priority over supplies.
Debt-ridden Future Group on Friday said it will sell part of its stake in Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd (ACKPL), which publishes Amar Chitra Katha comics, for Rs 13.62 crore. It has entered into definitive agreements on Thursday to dispose of part of its investments held in ACKPL constituting to 18.58 per cent of the total paid-up share capital of ACKPL to Ramanaidu Daggubati and Spirit Media, according to a regulatory filing. Future Consumer Ltd (FCL), part of the Future Group, will be offloading the stake.
The sale of Nature's Basket, Godrej's chain of food stores in west India, is the second exit by a big group in a year in the category
Among all the geographies where Amazon is fighting regulators, India is the only place where its lines are also tangled in a major corporate battle, this one with India's largest company by market capitalisation over the acquisition of Mumbai-based Future Group's retail chain, the country's second largest. No other corporate entity in any country offers a challenge to Amazon's hegemony in a way Reliance Industries does - and the final hearing of an arbitration case filed at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre between the two may decide at least some of these issues. This legal battle between one of the world's most powerful corporations and one of India's most powerful conglomerates could be complicated by a host of other developments.
While brick-and-mortar retailers have been the most vocal in their protests, e-tailers do not seem to be in a hurry.
Mandarin Oriental New York, the premium luxury hotel a subsidiary of Reliance Industries is acquiring, is known for its much-in-demand ballroom, five-star spa and eating and drinking venues, including MO Lounge. Liam Neeson and Lucy Liu are among regular guests. Set up in 2003, 248-rooms-and-suites hotel towering over Central Park is an iconic luxury hotel located at 80 Columbus Circle, directly adjacent to the pristine Central Park and Columbus Circle.
Reliance Industries, construction major L&T and IRB Infrastructure are some of the top companies that have used an infrastructure investment trust structure to reduce part of their debt and generate returns for their investors. Earlier this month, IRB Infrastructure InvIT was listed on the National Stock Exchange, giving its investors an option to exit by selling their units. The listing came within months of the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi's) guidelines for conversion of private unlisted InvITs into listed ones were issued.
Sale of Apple's iPhone 15 is estimated to have registered a 100 per cent growth compared to that of the iPhone 14 series on the first day with high demand for made-in-India iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models, according to industry sources. Apple has for the first time made available the 'made-in-India' iPhone on the same day it started selling the devices in the country and other parts of the globe. "Till evening, 6 pm IST, the sales of iPhone 15 series have recorded over 100 per cent growth on Day 1 compared to the sale of iPhone 14.
Asking the government to tweak FDI norms in multi-brand segment, retailers said sourcing rules must be made similar to that of single brand while demanding foreign firms be allowed to put only 50 per cent of first tranche of investment in back-end infrastructure.
