Indian billionaires: Ambani vs Adani

Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani tiptoed around each other for years to reach the top two rungs of Asia’s wealth ladder. While one of them built an empire in telecom and retail, the other established a lock on transport and energy distribution. The two billionaires from India’s Gujarat state are starting to overlap, setting the stage for a clash that could alter the country’s business landscape. Given the duo’s proximity to politics, the shock is bound to reverberate through the corridors of power as well. In the latest sign of their coalescing orbits, the Adani Group has discussed the idea of buying a stake in Saudi Aramco from the oil-rich kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, potentially linking the investment to a broader tie-up or asset swap deal. This is just months after Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and Aramco called off more than two years of talks to sell 20pc of the Indian conglomerate’s oils-to-chemicals unit to the Saudi behemoth for about $20bn to $25bn billion-worth of Aramco shares.

(Adapted from “Grab Some Popcorn: This Billionaire Rivalry Is Getting Intense,” by Andy Mukherjee, published on March 23, 2022, by Bloomberg Opinion)

Mini breaks instead of vacations

Intentionally build moments into your routine to replenish your energy, zone out, and experience calm. Think of these gaps as “recovery time” — blank spaces in your schedule that will allow you to re-enter work feeling fresh and motivated. If you’re a manager or leader, try to make sure that your “resting” habits also trickle down to your team. In group meetings and one-on-ones, check in with your direct reports to see how they’re doing emotionally. Share how you disconnect from work and take care of your well-being in return. This will help normalise conversations around burnout. You can also encourage your direct reports to adopt a more sustainable work-life balance by actively modelling healthy behaviours. That means you leave the office on time, avoid working or sending emails after hours, and review your team goals periodically to ensure that people don’t feel overworked.

(Adapted from “What First-Time Managers Can Do to Address Burnout,” by Ben Laker, Vijay Pereira, Ashish Malik, and Marcello Mariani, published by Harvard Business Review”)

Values are more important than gender

My medical school class was at least 50pc women. My residency program was at least 50pc women. That’s why I erroneously thought I would probably not encounter discrimination based on gender, but I was wrong,” said Linda Vahdat, MBA ’14, in a recent question & answer session when we asked about her professional life as a woman in the workplace. Ms Vahdat is deputy cancer centre director, section chief of medical oncology and interim section chief of haematology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center. She went on to discuss some lessons she’s learned in her career. “Lesson #1: Don’t assume because you have a female boss that she will be committed to helping you any more than a male boss,” she said. “The person and their values are more important than the gender. The colleagues who helped mentor me the most in the early part of my career — and today — are men.

(Adapted from “This oncologist pushes women to get more in contract negotiations,” by Meredith Somers, published on Mar 7, 2022, by MIT Management Sloan School)

Covid-19 in China

Lu Jiaying hadn’t tested positive for Covid-19 and hadn’t experienced any symptoms. But the 34-year-old technology worker and resident of central Shanghai was ordered to board a bus for a mass quarantine centre. Nearly 16 hours later, Lu, still aboard the bus in a head-to-toe protective suit, hadn’t eaten a bite, sipped any water or gone to the bathroom, a casualty of the chaos that has seized China’s biggest and most prosperous city amid a surge in Covid infections. The travails endured by Lu and her two dozen fellow passengers, many of them elderly, hint at the hardships Shanghai’s 25m people have faced in recent weeks, upending lives and straining the city’s resources as local authorities seek to carry out Beijing’s mandate of stamping out Covid infections wherever they appear. During one of several calls to the police, Lu, who said she was too afraid to fall asleep, expressed concerns over her asthma and her previous bouts of pneumonia.

(Adapted from “Shanghai Woman’s 16-Hour Bus Ride Into Quarantine: ‘My Only Wish is to Leave This Place Alive,’ by Stella Yifan Xie, published on April 5, 2022, by The Wall Street Journal)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 18th, 2022