Newsmaker: Anil Singhvi

Making concrete sense

Anil Singhvi

In December 1985, Anil Singhvi met S S Bhandari, the then finance controller of Gujarat Ambuja Cements at Maker Chamber III, Nariman Point, seeking a job. Bhandari was impressed with Singhvi's CV but was not willing to commit on the spot as he was not sure whether Singhvi would stick around.

After all, he did not spend too many years in his earlier assignments. But the young chartered account wanted an immediate decision from Gujarat Ambuja. Newly married and without a job, Singhvi was running out of patience.

He waited for an hour to meet the managing director who would take the final call. Narotam S Sekhsaria, the boss, was equally impressed by Singhvi's academic background but wanted to know how many years he would remain with Gujarat Ambuja. "As long as you want me," was Singhvi's one-line answer.

After two decades, Singhvi, 45, is now managing director of Gujarat Ambuja on the same terms and conditions applicable to Sekhsaria, who stepped down as MD and was made vice-chairman this week.

"He has come up the ladder not by virtue of being loyal to the promoters alone. Very few finance professionals can match his shrewdness. He combines the conventional Marwari wisdom for money with a rare analytical mind," says a company insider.

Gujarat Ambuja was Singhvi's third job. The commerce graduate from Jodhpur started his career in Blowplast in 1982 but left the company after three years when he failed to convince the promoters that its foray into toy business was not in sync with its mainline activities.

The next stop for him was Century Enka, the most profitable Indian company at that time with 48 per cent operating profit margin. Here too, Singhvi did not stick around beyond six months as he found Century Enka did not have any growth plan.

Promoter BK Birla's lieutenant G D Malpani tried to convince him to stay back but Singhvi walked out on a day's notice. He was about to join Orson, an electrical company, but changed his mind when he saw promoter Manu Chhabria was wearing "bathroom slippers" in his office.

Singhvi joined Gujarat Ambuja when cement was a dirty word and for a Rs 20 crore working capital requirement, the company had to tie up with a consortium of 11 banks.

Fourteen years later, Bank of America disbursed Rs 350 crore on a day's notice to fund Gujarat Ambuja's acquisition of DLF Cement. Senior executives of the MNC bank were partying at Madh Island in suburban Mumbai on a Sunday.

On receiving Sanghvi's telephone call from Delhi, they had to rush to the capital (in their bermudas as they could not afford to miss the flight from Mumbai!) and issue a bankers' cheque the next day, which happened to be a public holiday.

Singhvi took a flight to Delhi on Saturday for a tea session with the promoters of DLF Cement, stayed back for two days and snatched the company from the jaws of French cement major Lafarge by offering 5 per cent extra and arranging the cash over the weekend.

An investment banker was roped in later when Gujarat Ambuja made an open offer after picking up the promoters' 35 per cent stake. "He is capable of conceptualising a deal and concluding it single-handedly and the investment banker's presence is mostly a formality," said an industry source.

This was not the first time that Singhvi sealed a deal with electrifying speed. In 1997, Gujarat Ambuja acquired the ailing Modi Cement in record time.

IFC Washington, which had a substantial exposure to Modi Cement, demanded its loan (given in Deutsche Mark) to be repaid as a precondition to accept the deal but being a sick company under BIFR, Modi Cement was not a position to remit the foreign exchange.

Singhvi bargained hard and made IFC agree to settle for a massive haircut (18 per cent discount to the principal amount) and overnight transferred the exposure from the books of Modi Cement to Gujarat Ambuja. Once that was done, there was no problem in securing the RBI nod for the remittance.

"He combines aggression with innovation but never throws caution to the wind," says an investment banker who has seen him from close quarters.

In 1992, Gujarat Ambuja was the first company to go for rights issue in the free pricing regime after the abolition of the controller of capital issues.

The pricing for the rights issue was fixed at Rs 215 when the market price of Gujarat Ambuja shares was Rs 240. The market price fell below the issue price but Singhvi did not lose nerves and made sure that the issue was oversubscribed.

"He takes a close look at any deal when he is sure of 25 per cent success and takes the plunge after thrashing out the rough edges and raising the chances of success to 75 per cent. He is unlikely to change his style of functioning even in his new role," says an industry expert, who strongly believes that the running a cement company is all about chalking out strategies for growth and infusing capital.

Singhvi is a seasoned player on this turf. Like Sekhsaria, he is rarely seen partying. He spends his spare time playing table, which is a great stress buster.