"Save for the public sector and multinationals, India is full of family businesses," says Professor K Ramachandran of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
In India, the Tatas, Godrejs, and Mahindras are large business families whose progeny run the conglomerates. While this looms large in the public consciousness, it does not seem to have impacted their earnings in any significant way.
Wipro is an anomaly, mostly because it operates in the IT environment where professionally run firms are the norm. The software giant's founder, Azim Premji, has had to periodically defend the entrance and elevation of his son Rishad within the company.
Wipro's rival Infosys, by contrast, does not allow children of its founders to work at the company. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), while partly owned by Tata Sons, is a fully professional organisation. Neither its current chief executive, nor the previous holders of that office had a family connection to the Tata name.
A relatively young firm, Cognizant, is now among the top five companies in IT services. Founded in 1994 as the Indian arm of Dun & Bradstreet, it is recognised as a "fully professional IT firm with not even a whiff of a family name to taint it", as one analyst says. Cognizant, the analyst adds, might overtake Wipro as the third-largest Indian software firm in a few years - after TCS and Infosys.
This is the baggage Mr Premji has to battle. In the past few months, I have come to admire him. He seems like a man who marches to his own drumbeat.
Indian tycoons have been engaging recently in what I call philanthropic social climbing - giving large amounts of money to a university that doesn't need it, just to get their names on the world stage.
Anand Mahindra, the managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra, last October gave US$10 million (Dh36.7m) to Harvard to establish a humanities centre bearing his name.
Tata gave $50m to Harvard Business School in November to institute a Tata Hall. Mr Premji, who went to Stanford, had not gone down that route until last month, when he gave $2 billion to improve school education in India, the largest single act of philanthropy by an Indian citizen.
Usually circumspect, he is outspoken when he needs to be. In Davos for the World Economic Forum, Mr Premji told the western press that emerging economies are "fed up" with being lectured to by the West about opening up their economies without adequate reciprocity.
Also this week, he condemned the Indian government for being tainted by large corruption scandals, even as he learnt that he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honour. Famously frugal, Mr Premji travels economy class, drives a Toyota Corolla, and does not flaunt his wealth or his faith. In fact, when The Wall Street Journal wrote a front-page profile with the title "How a Muslim billionaire thrives in Hindu India," friends and colleagues of Mr Premji bristled because, they said, that is not how he sees himself.
Can this secular Indian billionaire with an estimated net worth of $17 billion put a succession plan in place, particularly one that the market will buy?
Questions about succession have always dogged Wipro, and Mr Premji, who is seen as the heart, soul and face of the company. Part of the reason is because Wipro seems unable to retain top management.
Vivek Paul, who played a key role in turning the company into a global billion-dollar business and led its listing in the New York Stock Exchange, quit to join a private equity firm. Other executives such as Subroto Bagchi and Ashok Soota left to start MindTree a decade ago.
Wipro, based in Bangalore, last week shocked the business world by announcing that its two joint chief executives were quitting their jobs to make way for TK Kurien, a relatively unknown but senior manager.
The explanation put out by Wipro was that the joint chief executive model was no longer working, something that was reflected in its lacklustre third-quarter performance.
Wipro posted a 10 per cent growth, which compared poorly with 14.2 per cent by Infosys Technologies, and 30 per cent by Tata Consultancy Services.
"Firing the business heads because the quarterly performance hasn't been good is unprofessional. It sends a message that this is my company and this is what I want to do," says Prof Ramachandran.
He adds that globally, family-run businesses tend to perform better because the owners in general take long-term views instead of reacting to the short-term performance numbers, as Wipro just did.
Rishad Premji, 33, is tall and sports fashionably long hair. After a stint at the management consultancy Bain, he joined Wipro in June 2007 and was fast-tracked to become the chief strategy officer last year.
After the two joint chief executives were shown the door, Rishad has also taken over the company's mergers and acquisitions business.
"Clearly, Rishad is getting groomed for the top slot," says Prof Ramachandran. "The advantage of that strategy is that you get a bird's eye view of the business without having top-line or bottom-line responsibility. It is found to be a fast track to get to the top without getting into operations."
In a television interview from Davos, the elder Mr Premji maintained the shuffle of jobs among top management had nothing to do with promoting his son, stating instead that there was a difference between ownership and management.
"He (Rishad) represents ownership if I am not there," said Mr Premji. "That is a very august responsibility … he is much too young and has much to experience.
"We have a very systematic process of succession, and it will be foolish on my part to have in succession someone who is not ready for the job - who may never be ready for the job."
Whether or not Rishad Premji succeeds his father, Wipro has its job cut out for the next several months and years.
The good news is that, unlike the Macau gaming tycoon, Stanley Ho, whose numerous children are involved in a dispute over their inheritance, there is only one Premji son in the business.
Shoba Narayan is a Bangalore-based columnist and author of Monsoon Diary
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Mia Man’s tips for fermentation
- Start with a simple recipe such as yogurt or sauerkraut
- Keep your hands and kitchen tools clean. Sanitize knives, cutting boards, tongs and storage jars with boiling water before you start.
- Mold is bad: the colour pink is a sign of mold. If yogurt turns pink as it ferments, you need to discard it and start again. For kraut, if you remove the top leaves and see any sign of mold, you should discard the batch.
- Always use clean, closed, airtight lids and containers such as mason jars when fermenting yogurt and kraut. Keep the lid closed to prevent insects and contaminants from getting in.
Abu Dhabi World Pro 2019 remaining schedule:
Wednesday April 24: Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship, 11am-6pm
Thursday April 25: Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship, 11am-5pm
Friday April 26: Finals, 3-6pm
Saturday April 27: Awards ceremony, 4pm and 8pm
Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi
Director: Kangana Ranaut, Krish Jagarlamudi
Producer: Zee Studios, Kamal Jain
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Ankita Lokhande, Danny Denzongpa, Atul Kulkarni
Rating: 2.5/5
Women%E2%80%99s%20T20%20World%20Cup%20Qualifier
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
