Ornithologists study birds, apiologists study bees and anthropologists study humanity. By this token, the dedicated crowd of investors, analysts, fund managers and media persons tracking Reliance Industries could be called Reliancologists.
The weeks leading to the company’s annual general meeting on Friday have seen an intense speculation on the big announcements chairman, Mr Mukesh Ambani, is going to come up with. In the preceding weeks, Reliance has already been linked with possible acquisitions in power, telecom, oil and gas segments, financial services and healthcare. In the past years, some big announcements — doubling of refining capacity, entry in petrol pump business and doubling of KG-D6.
On Thursday, some television channels reported that RIL may be taking up a 26 per cent stake in hospital owner Fortis that is getting into a takeover battle of its own. A web portal also reported that RIL may be considering buying a 26 per cent stake in Reliance Communications of ADAG.
On Wednesday, there was speculation of RIL acquiring a large thermal power project. Last week had seen speculation on Reliance being interested in a major stake in Pioneer — a company involved in Shale gas — a hard to produce form of natural gas.
JM Financials — which provides investment banking services and run mutual funds — has also been amongst the firms identified as takeover targets. The stock price of JM Financials had soared 20 per cent the same day as the report came out.
While speculation on RIL’s next move is an evergreen sport, it usually picks up in the days and weeks before the company’s AGM.
This time however, the game is especially intense — because the two Ambani siblings recently scrapped their no-compete agreement allowing RIL to get into many more businesses.
Moreover, RIL is also sitting on a huge pile of cash with more being added every quarter.
Also, in the past three months, RIL has made two billion dollar plus acquisitions — something it had never done earlier.
It had earlier acquired a stake in a shale gas project in the US for $1.7 billion followed by the Rs 4,800 crore buyout of Infotel Broadband.