T N Ninan: Family Matters

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

The astonishing revelation that Dhirubhai Ambani never wrote a will, though he had his first cerebral stroke 16 years before he died, raises the question whether super-achievers are unable to deal with the thought of their own mortality.

Ambani's bete noire when both were alive, Ram Nath Goenka of The Indian Express, also failed to work out a smooth succession though he lived till nearly 90. The result was that advisers were nudging him till close to the end to will the company into a trust (with the advisers as trustees, naturally). In the event, two grand-nephews fought out the succession and eventually divided one newspaper into two""with some issues unresolved even 10 years later.

People with unusual success stories usually have a good understanding of human motivation and frailties. Neither Ambani nor Goenka could have been unaware of the possibility that their inheritors might fall out.

Both Mukesh and Anil Ambani are able, energetic, and ambitious, and beyond a point no one company can have enough space for both of them, especially when the age difference is not great and there are family tensions adding to the complications.

If this is obvious to most observers, surely it should have been obvious to Dhirubhai, who had few peers in his ability to size up people and situations. So why did he not plan an orderly inheritance?

And yet, the pattern is a familiar one, even as sibling squabbles are also depressingly common: the Chhabria brothers (one accused the other of stealing his company), the Modi spats spanning not one but two generations, and so on. Sometimes a quick split is the easiest solution""as is evident when you look at the slow burnout of the DCM group.

On other occasions the fire breaks out after a split, as between the brothers R P and G P Goenka, because the two groups were sometimes bidding against each other for the same company in a takeover game. Something similar happened in the case of the Ispat Mittals.

In comparison, few have been as controlled as the Birlas, who did a discreet partitioning of group assets following G D Birla's death in 1983 (though some reports spoke of private acrimony).

But the post script in this case is particularly unseemly, since a squabble has erupted because there is a will (in the M P Birla affair) whose contents caused surprise.

Why, there can be severe tensions even when there is no serious inheritance issue; it is no secret for instance that J R D Tata and his cousin, Naval Tata, were not on the best of terms""though this did not prevent JRD from crowning Naval's son the group chairman, and doing so in his own lifetime so that the new chairman had time to settle in without serious challenges to his position.

Sometimes, the web of investment companies and family trusts that actually hold the shares in the operating companies, comes in the way of any easy resolution of issues. Readers may remember that the Sarabhais (in the days when they ran a significant business empire) had no fewer than 1,400 trusts, in some of which unborn members of the family had gifted assets to people who were a couple of generations senior to them! The income tax people finally latched on, massive tax defaults were alleged, and the issue blew up in public.

This is not to say that groups cannot stay together and work to a common purpose through successive generations. The Godrejs hold out one example, and until recently, the Bajaj family could have laid claim to the same achievement.

The wisest, of course, are those who work out family issues in an open consultative manner, if necessary with expert advice from disinterested friends/consultants""as has been done by the Murugappa group.

This divorces issues of ownership from management, treats family issues separately from corporate matters, recognises that the one should not come in the way of the other, and manages situations of tension and potential conflict before they erupt into ugly fights.

Though the many rumours and unconfirmed stories doing the rounds speak of considerable animus having built up already, it is not too late for Mukesh and Anil to sort matters out amicably, in their mutual interest as well as in the interest of the companies they run.