Udaipur Turns into Davos as Fortune 500 CEOs, Hillary Clinton Arrive for Isha Ambani's Wedding

New Delhi: Global CEOs, including steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, BP group chief executive Bob Dudley, 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch and Diageo CEO Ivan Menezes, among others, descended on Udaipur to attend the wedding festivities of Isha Ambani, the daughter of RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani, along with prominent politicians and movie stars.

Isha Ambani, 27, will marry Anand Piramal, 33, executive director of Piramal Group, in Mumbai on Tuesday, but the festivities began this weekend in Rajasthan's ‘City of Lakes’ Udaipur, with three days of pre-wedding rituals.

Other high-profile corporate leaders attending the wedding festivities include Khalid Al-Falih, chairman of Saudi Aramco; Bill Winters, CEO, Standard Chartered Bank; WPP founder Martin Sorell; Kenneth Hitchner, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs in Asia Pacific ex-Japan; Nicolas Aguzin, chairman and CEO, JP Morgan Asia Pacific; Farhan Faruqui, group executive international, ANZ; Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum; Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and CEO of Thrive Global; and Rajeev Suri, president and CEO of Nokia.

The guest list also includes former US secretary of state and Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election Hillary Clinton and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. According to sources, US singer Beyonce will perform at the wedding.

Anil Kapoor, David Dhawan, Vidya Balan-Siddharth Roy Kapur, John Abraham-Priya Runchal and Javed Jaffrey, Sachin Tendulkar-Anjali Tendulkar, Priyanka Chopra-Nick Jonas, Sakshi Singh Dhoni and her daughter Ziva, among others were also seen.

The soon-to-be married couple arrived in Udaipur on December 6 with designer Manish Malhotra to kick-off the preparations for their wedding celebrations, which are speculated to be an intimate affair. The couple apparently wants to celebrate their wedding as a personal and private moment with their close circle of friends.

The wedding will bring together two of India's most prominent business families. RIL is India’s biggest private enterprise. The Piramals have interests in pharmaceuticals and real estate.

The couple’s engagement took place at the luxury Villa D'Este hotel on Italy's Lake Como, attended by more than 600 guests, and featuring a private performance by singer John Legend.

https://www.news18.com/news/india/hillary-clinton-lakshmi-mittal-sachin-tendulkar-arrive-for-isha-ambanis-pre-wedding-celebration-in-udaipur-1964697.html

THE SECRET BEHIND THE CLINTON-AMBANI TALK

The Hindu, a Chennai-based national newspaper of India, brought out on March 27, 2000, a secret story of nearly an hour-long private engagement between Mr.Clinton and the Ambanis, one of India's most influential industrial families, when Clinton was in Mumbai during his visit to India. This is an inside story of the commercial focus of Clinton's visit.

The Ambanis have built up the world's largest petrochemical complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat and have been explored the prospects of the building land-based pipelines for oil and natural gas, to be brought from Persian Gulf to the Indian market. The Musharraf Government of Pakistan, too is said to have cleared the proposal for a natural gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan, as the Pakistan Press reported, adding that the country could make money, in terms of transit fees, by just letting gas flow from Gulf To India.

Obviously, the Ambanis need these 'pipelines' to be "peace pipelines'; and no one could build transnational pipelines without the financial and political blessings of the US. Such blessings could also be used to pressurise Pakistan to accept the project at a reduced transit fee, for the Pakistan ruling class would want, in their turn, to maximise the latter.

Hence the interests converged. Clinton from his economic, military and political stake in India and its domestic market sent messages of peace to the two countries, and the Ambanis had their 'complex' and 'pipelines' in view. So the Hindu concluded, " trade and commerce could finally begin to shape the politics of war and peace in the subcontinent".

This is a glaring instance of the plain fact that the Indian monopolists have already acquired an imperialist trait to explore and exploit the raw materials of other countries. A junior partner of the imperialist camp at that, the Indian ruling class seeks strength and support from bigger 'brothers'.

This also points to a second reality: India enjoys a rather different position among the developing countries. Whereas the GATT, WTO and such others in the recent past have compelled the weaker of the deveploping countries to succumb to the mounting pressures of the big imperialist, particularly the US imperialism, Indian monopolists enjoy a positon to pursue a 'give and take' policy with the US imperialism even. They open India's domestic market to the US imperialism in return for the latter's support to realise its design and while negotiating to make a deal try give effect to the design itself.

https://www.mail-archive.com/kominform@lists.eunet.fi/msg00902.html

Hillary Clinton to meet Tata, Ambani

Last updated on: July 17, 2009 15:13 IST

Corporate leaders Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani and others are likely to explore measures to boost bilateral business ties during their brainstorming session over breakfast with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday.

Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Mumbai on Friday night on an official visit to India during which high-level discussions are likely to promote bilateral co-operation in the $30 billion Indian civil nuclear power programme and the $43-billion bilateral trade. She will be flying-in from the Czech Republic capital, Prague.

India's top businessmen are expected to meet her at the iconic Taj Hotel. The sea-facing hotel bore the brunt of a terror attack in November last year.

Clinton is expected to meet Ratan Tata who leads India's premier conglomerate, the Tata group, along with other top industrialists like Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries and Godrej group Chairman Adi Godrej. A few top Tata group officials are also expected to attend the meet.

Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy's wife Sudha Murthy, who is deeply involved with corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and Chanda Kochhar, who heads India's largest private sector bank, ICICI, are also expected to interact with the US Secretary of State. Gita Piramal is also understood to be one of the invitees from India Inc.

This is Hillary Clinton's first visit to India after assuming charge as the US Secretary of State in the Obama administration early this year.

The global economic meltdown has particularly affected the United States. The measures taken by its government to beat the recession are likely to be discussed in the meet.

India's relatively strong growth of 6 per cent and its resilient economy has emerged as a strong focus area for the US in recent years and Clinton's visit is expected to give a further boost to the burgeoning trade-ties between the two countries.

Clinton will be staying at the Ratan Tata-owned Taj Hotel's new wing. Usually, foreign dignitaries are put up in the hotel's heritage wing which is under renovation following the November 26 terror strike. She will, therefore, be staying in the tower section of the hotel.

http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/jul/17/clinton-to-meet-india-inc-honchos.htm

Business moghul Ambani is key partner for defence contracts between France and India

In just a few months, Indian business tycoon Anil Ambani has established himself as the key intermediary for virtually the whole of the French military-industrial complex in India. He has close relations with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who has been in power since 2014. Since then, Modi has signed several major contracts with French industrial groups partnered by Ambani. The leading one among them is Dassault, which signed a mega contract for the sale of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft with India in September 2016. Thanks to this and other contracts, the flamboyant business magnate has been able to restore his financial health after the failure of several large-scale ventures which have been carefully edited out of his officially biography. How has Ambani been able to win the loyalty of French business groups? Has he the financial solidity to meet the commitments he has taken on in the defence sector? Over the last 12 monts, Intelligence Online has taken a long, hard look at the connections of the man who has become the key channel for business between France and India.

https://www.intelligenceonline.com/REPORT/ambani-partner-defence-contracts-France-India

The Truth Behind the Indo - France Deal

India's plan to procure 400 fighter planes has left Indian defence companies drooling over the prospects of mega-contracts.

A recent alliance was announced in September between Sweden’s SAAB and its strange new partner, the Adani Group, for an order of F-16 fighter aircrafts. Just like Adani, Anil Ambani is also clinching defence deals all over the world, in the name of the Indian government, most recently in France. This is on account of the business tycoon's close relations with PM Narendra Modi, alleges Intelligence Online, a Paris-based strategic information newsletter. In its September issue, the newsletter remarks, "In just a few months, Indian business tycoon Anil Ambani has established himself as the key intermediary for virtually the whole of the French military-industrial complex in India. He has close relations with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been in power since 2014."

Curiously enough, with a drag of $12 billion in debts and failures of several large-scale ventures, Ambani has been able to win the trust of the French conglomerates. The Rafale fighter aircraft deal, amongst other defence contracts signed between the two governments, has given a major lift-off to the financial health of the Reliance business magnate, after suffering massive losses in telecom and entertainment sectors.

However, the partnership for 36 Rafale aircrafts between the French conglomerate Dassault and Reliance Group is suffering from major immaturity and lack of experience of Ambani in the defence sector, alleges the Intelligence Online. Despite owning 51% of the joint venture, Reliance is yet to put the required money into the venture which is testing Dassault’s patience, claims the Parisian newsletter.

Despite all this, Junior Ambani has placed himself in the middle of the entire French military apparatus in India, slowly emerging out of the ‘blacklist’ of defence companies, says the report. Leading the charge is Modi’s Chief of Staff Nripendra Mishra, helping Junior Ambani reposition Reliance Defence and Engineering (RDE) as a go-to contractor for all Indian defence contracts.

From the report, it is clear that Ambani owes his late-late admission into defence to his closeness to Mr. Modi. Right after the 2014 victory, PM Modi got Ambani involved into the Rafale negotiations. Finally, the money paid for the Modi’s campaign via the People’s Electoral Trust (PET) has started to bear fruit for Anil Ambaniand his sinking Reliance group, the startling report reveals.

With several lucrative mega deals are still to be tabled, the fortunes of India’s defence contractors should be looking up. However, as has been the case with Mr. Modi's administration, looks like this upside will be limited to a select few, who have have divided the pie among themselves.

https://www.inc.in/en/in-focus/the-truth-behind-the-indo-france-deal