Chapter 11i: the common man rarely understands legalese. They rarely understand who is the acquired and who is the acquiree. The PR narrative is that Axis Bank acquired Citibank India. Actually it was the other way around.
After the exit of the favourable SEBI chief and the favourable RBI chief – and the aftermath of three successive disasters – servesh Swarup becoming whistle blower, the Citibank scam where money disappeared from accounts and demonetisation – the carefully curated supply chain for cash had become a liability.
In the old days – a shareholder walked into Jeevan Bharati branch at CP. The Branch head Neenu Dutta would invite you for coffee. Servesh Swarup would be pinged on the internal high security internal messaging system. And things moved. The legal genius at the cash desk would be given a hand written slip. An ATM cash van would go and collect cash from wherever and within minutes an overseas account would be credited. It was flawless. Any amount could be moved to anywhere in the world.
But now times were bad. A new RBI governor was on his way. Panama leaks had exposed HSBC – the other Havala Bank. Employees were leaving. Not a single IITian had joined the bank. One of the country heads was a MBA from Kamraj Madurai University. A far cry from the IIM Ahmedabad educated Sanjay Nayyar or Nanoo Pamnani. The Tamilian Mahasabha was running into problems.
Cyrus Mistry wanted to disband the GEC which had three eminent Tamilians. Led by Mukund Rajan, brother of Raghuram Rajan. Even L&T was getting out of their clutches.
But who is the “they”. The “they” are the three shareholders who control Citigroup. Vanguard, Blackrock and one more. There is a maze of entities which finally exercised control.
But in India what matters is possession. Not shareholding. A plan was made to acquire Axis Bank. Shikha Sharma – the key banker for Sahara was retiring. It was best to leave the country. The Sahara investigation had shown that Axis left to itself could be dangerous. Overtures to Chanda Kochar has yielded no result. But then what does it take to dislodge a bank CEO if you are the Citi HDFC ecosystem.
Now the job was to install a new CEO at Axis. In addition, it was just too dangerous to leave any assets in India. Not only would they get attached, the key people would be jailed and all the skeletons would start dancing.
It was time to go back to the classic playbook.
Merge, demerge, slump sale, confuse, fix judge … and home run. This started with CFIL in 2012 and by now had been perfected.
It was now time to extend the Citi HDFC ecosystem to include Axis Bank. A suitable lead had to be found.
The Citi dirty tricks department was at its best. Cyrus Mistry had been eliminated. Servesh Swarup was dead. Sahara had been decimated. Chanda Kochar destroyed. Dilip Pendse hung himself from a fan.
And then one more.
Amarendra Sharan died mysteriously.
Will come back to this much later.
This is the master key that unravelled the plot.
