India’s biggest ever rights issues of shares by the country’s single largest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited, is under way at a time when the economy is in terrible shape. Is the fund raising effort being conducted in a manner that could end up with the company’s shareholders paying more than what they should for discounted shares?
Not very long before the $5.7 billion (Rs 43,000 crore) investment in Reliance Jio by social media giant Facebook was announced, Mukesh Ambani and his family members shuffled their shares within the family. While this may have led to a notional gain in the value of the shares, a response sent through his lawyer asserted that since the share transactions were a transfer within the family and family entities no profits or losses can be made.
