Ajay Piramal to get lion's share

MUMBAI: After rift in Reliance empire, it's time for separation in Piramal group. According to unconfirmed reports, the shareholding in investment and holding companies which control crucial businesses in the group has shifted over the past few years and is now tilted in chairman Ajay Piramal's favour. Faced with little other option but to accept whatever she can get, his sister-in-law Urvi is believed to have agreed to the terms offered. It's not clear whether her husband left behind a will. There's also speculation that a leading industrialist who is close to Ajay played mediator in the separation, but sources say there is "no truth whatsoever in these rumours". There's another story doing the rounds: That HDFC chairman and India Inc's "man for all seasons and reasons" Deepak Parekh has been playing peacemaker. Urvi Piramal has three sons, Harsh, Rajeev and Nandan, in their late, mid- and early twenties respectively. Ajay and his wife Swati, who plays a prominent role in the group, have one son, Anand, who's in school in US. Over the last decade, Ajay Piramal has emerged as one of India Inc's best-known faces, aggressively transforming what was originally a textile group into a Rs 3,500-crore conglomerate with interests in pharmaceuticals, retailing, construction and engineering. Nicholas Piramal, which came into being in the late nineties with the acquisition of Nicholas Laboratories from Sara Lee, has grown into one of the country's five largest pharma companies. Along the way, Piramal became known as a takeover tycoon as he snapped up the Indian operations of such multinational giants as Roche, Rhone Poulenc, Hoescht Marion Rousell, ICI and Boehringer Mannheim. Of late, the group, which via Piramal Holdings promoted Crossroads at Mumbai's Haji Ali about 5 years ago, has become known more as a property developer. Some say the Piramals may have more property under development than Rahejas and Hiranandanis.