Mumbai/Johannesburg: One month into formal consolidation talks between Reliance Communications and South African telecom giant MTN, the estranged Ambani brothers have got into another round of power play - one keen to get the deal through and the other using his all his muscle to thwart the attempt to create the world's seventh largest mobile phone entity.

Last week, Mukesh Ambani, who controls India's largest private sector company, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), and his trusted aide and friend for decades Anand Jain, spent significant amount of time in Johannesburg, meeting key officials in President Thabo Mbeki's government.

Their visit coincided with a crucial annual general meeting in the same city of MTN, whose potential merger with Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications (R-Com) re-ignited the simmering tensions between the two brothers. Both MTN and R-Com had announced May 26 that they had entered into consolidation talks and that they would hold exclusive negotiations for 45 days.

Little emerged from the Ambani meeting as Mbeki's confidants refused to be drawn into what they called was an traditional Indian business family affair. But MTN chairman Cyril Ramaphosa played his cards safely.

He restricted the AGM to a 30-minute affair and remained silent on the talks with R-Com. For that matter, he also did not raise the issue of the letter sent by elder brother Mukesh Ambani's RIL that threatened to block the planned consolidation, claiming a right of first refusal for the shares of R-Com, should they be sold.

Nevertheless, corporate watchers say that central to the deal is the crucial issue of current and potential future revenues of the two warring brothers - more specifically, which group has higher turnover.

The two rival groups - the Reliance Industries group and the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG), once controlled by Reliance - were carved out after a bitterly fought battle between the two brothers over the empire created by their legendary father Dhirubhai Ambani.

For Anil Ambani, the proposed deal with MTN is his grandest ever, to create the world's seventh largest mobile phone company with 115 million subscribers spanning Africa, the Middle East and India and joint control over an entity that has an earnings forecast of $10 billion in 2009.

The junior Ambani hopes to engineer a de facto reverse takeover between R-Com and MTN, under which he will swap most of his 66 percent stake in R-Com for a 34.9 percent stake in the combined entity.

If the deal comes through, it would then put the junior Ambani a cool $3 billion ahead of the diversified oil exploration refining, petrochemicals and retail conglomerate of his brother Mukesh and its $7 billion turnover.

It would also help Anil move ahead in the Forbes rich list where he - with fortune worth $42 billion - currently stands a tad short of Mukesh's fifth rank with a fortune of $43 billion.