Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

Pushy Billionaires Can Be a Force for Good

Kumar Mangalam Birla’s dogged pursuit of an insolvent cement business will help road test India's bankruptcy law.

March 20, 2018 at 5:22 AM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

Exclusive Interview With Aditya Birla Group Chairman And Billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla — Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

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Kumar Mangalam Birla just treated India's new bankruptcy law with disdain. But before you dismiss this as yet another instance of a billionaire behaving badly, think of the huge favor he's doing the legal system.

Normally, Birla's 72.7 billion rupee ($1.1 billion) offer to Binani Industries Ltd. for its 98.4 percent stake in Binani Cement would be unremarkable. Birla's UltraTech Cement Ltd., already the country's largest cement producer, gets to ramp up in anticipation of a much-awaited recovery in housing construction. Binani also has capacity in China and Dubai.