Suits & Sayings: This 69-yr-old multibillionaire’s magic formula is yogurt & sugar; boss buys Dubai villa during company’s massive cull

ET’s weekly roundup of the wackiest whispers and murmurs in corporate corridors & policy parlours

Mother’s Recipe
He may be overleveraged and every time you feel he could crumble under the weight of his debt, this mining magnate bounces back, riding the commodity wave. So what’s his magic formula? Yogurt and sugar. This he says is what gets him going, even at 69. It also soothes nerves before any big speech and these days he has been giving many to promote his massive upcoming manufacturing JV. It’s an age-old Indian tradition but for him it’s his mom’s blessings as she would give him this during his early years in Patna. He may shuttle between London and Mumbai managing his multibillion dollar empire but for some things, it’s always back to the basics.

Shaadi Mubarak
This has been a Rajasthani weekend for our city slickers with two high-profile marriages, one in Udaipur and the other in Jodhpur. The Bajaj khandaan were in their regal splendour to bless their niece --the daughter of auto component tycoon Anurang Jain--on her nuptials along with family friends from Pune and all over the world. The action then moved to yet another destination wedding at Jodhpur where last week’s chatter of bonus shares and CFO resignations were in abeyance as a young nayak got hitched to his sweetheart from Delhi over three days of partying. Didn’t realise even band baaja baraat can be so frantic!

Home Truths
Did this founder who always wore his humble roots on his sleeve just buy a villa in Dubai in the middle of a massive cull at his company? The glitzy city in the desert happens to be a key base for him and considering he sees the MENA region as a natural extension, which has probably led to some mega sponsorship deals, the timing does seem off when his company or the entire sector for that matter is in the doghouse. Reminds one of a party held for a tech investor in Delhi some months back when all the loss-making founders chose to fly private. Some excesses have no boundaries.

Logging Off, Logging In
The resignation of this senior executive after three decades working with this family-run technology giant came as a surprise to most in the industry but then when we learnt he is heading for a mid-sized IT services company run by a Delhi-based industrialist, also from a top business clan, it stumped us totally. Not because of the difference in scale of the two companies but the new place has always been a revolving door. The Delhi gent is a softie is what we learn from his friends, a gourmet who is at ease at an Indian Accent as he is in Bombay Canteen, but his wife apparently runs his tech business with an iron grip and has often been at loggerheads with the top professionals. Hopefully, the former boss of the Americas will find his new home welcoming.

Back in Reckoning
The resurgence of this US mid-tier investment bank known in India more for its equity research and crossborder pharma deals in the ECM sweepstakes has taken several of its bulge-bracket peers by total surprise. In August, it snagged the billion dollar block trade in one of India’s leading hospital chains where the incumbent PE investor cashed out all its chips making mega 5x returns and now the bank is also part of the largest FPO mandate. The reorganisation that took place at the bank seems to be paying off.