INDIAN tycoon Mukesh Ambani will abide by a court ruling ordering him to renegotiate a deal sharing the family’s gas wealth, his firm said on Saturday (May 8) after his legal victory against his brother Anil.
In a landmark decision on Friday (May 7) capping a vitriolic family feud, India’s Supreme Court rejected a deal between the estranged siblings involving sharing resources from the nation’s richest gas field off India’s east coast.
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), led by Mukesh, will renegotiate the gas supply pact with his brother’s Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL) ‘in the manner and within the (six-week) timeframe’ set by the court, the statement said.
Anil had demanded the honouring of a 2005 pact between the billionaire siblings allowing RNRL to buy gas for 17 years from the Krishna Godavari Basin owned by Mukesh at a price far below one later set by the government.
Mukesh, 53, sought to have the deal scrapped and said Anil must pay the price stipulated by the government – a position upheld by the court which said the gas belonged to the nation and could not be sold for a cut-rate price.
As a result of the ruling, Mukesh’s company gains higher revenues while the government gets bigger royalties.
