Billionaire uses £43bn firepower in challenge to brokers in India
Anil Ambani, one of the world’s richest men, has set up an Indian stockbroking business to compete directly with international investment banks and has hired the former head of Deutsche Bank’s equity division in the country to lead the push.
Keshav Sanghi, who quit Deutsche Bank three months ago as head of its Indian securities business, has joined Reliance Equity International as chief executive and hopes to have the business fully operational by early August.
Reliance has hired 40 staff so far and will have around 100 staff by the end of the year, according to Sanghi, who said the business was “gunning for the top”.
The business will initially be focused on broking, but is expected to expand into a full-service investment bank within the next couple of years.
Sanghi said: “There’s no reason why the foreign banks should have an edge in the Indian market.”
Deutsche Bank is currently the top-ranked bank in India for domestic equity offerings this year, according to figures from Bloomberg, and six out of the ten top underwriters in 2007 were foreign banks, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.
Reliance brand is already well-established in the Indian financial services sector, and Reliance Asset Management is the market leader in the country’s investment management industry and has $25bn (€16bn) in assets under management six years after it was established.
Ambani was this year named as the world’s richest man in The Sunday Times Rich List, with a personal fortune of £43bn (€54bn), more than double his stated wealth in the previous edition of the list. He was 6th in Forbes' list of the world's billionaires, published last month.
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