India's Most Talked-About Business Leaders

Bangalore: Either controversies or achievements, the corporate leaders of giant business industries are finding place in the news very often. Dow Jones Insight brings together the date of these business newsmakers for The Wall Street Journal every month. Interestingly the list tends to figure some common names for each month and the names listed for this month are:

Mukesh Ambani:

Mukesh Ambani finds the first place as the business newsmaker this month. He placed second in the last month’s list. The news is not a happy one for Mukesh this time. The major reason behind making headlines was the 21 percent drop in his company’s profit than last year. It was revealed after Reliance posted their net profit of 42.36 billion rupees in the January- March period. This was followed by a fall of 29 percent of company’s shares in the Bombay Stock Exchange over the period.

Beside this Reliance was criticized by India’s oil ministry for failing to meet its gas output target. The government pointed that it may not be possible for Reliance to recover the money that they spent over the development of an offshore gas fields since the gas production was much lesser than expected. The problem occurred from the decline in output from its D6 block. The fall was about 551.31 billion cubic feet that is about 24 percent in the year through March. The huge project that costs $ 5.6 billion has reached nowhere now.

Between these poor financial performances Mr. Ambani couldn’t make any increment in salary consecutively for four years now. Interestingly he still owns the position of richest man in the Asia and earns around 150 million rupees a year as per Reliance, and tops Forbes’ rich list for India.