IL&FS Employees' Welfare Trust: The link that paved way to riches for some

The trust's dealings were ignored by everyone, perhaps in the hope that the institutions that owned IL&FS had adequate board oversight of founder Ravi Parthasarathy and his people

It was buried in plain sight, in footnote No. 8 on page 28 of an IPO prospectus.

But nobody in September 2009 was paying attention to that particular disclosure.

And certainly not with any misgivings: Six months later, IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd., which housed the road assets of a pioneering Indian infrastructure finance, construction and management group, would see demand for 33 times the shares on offer.

Fast forward a decade, and the IL&FS Group is insolvent with $12.5 billion in unpaid debt. Credit analysts are doing a postmortem now, and finding clues that investors missed. The biggest of all