Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

Ambani Versus Bezos: A Fight or a Waiting Game?

Feud over an acquisition points to a high-stakes strategy in India’s gigantic retailing market.

November 2, 2020 at 11:00 PM 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.

Jeff Bezos can afford to take his time for the right deal.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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A vanilla commercial dispute is setting the stage for a clash between the world’s No. 1 and No. 6 richest men. But the legal wrangling is a sideshow. What Jeff Bezos and Mukesh Ambani are really fighting over is pole position in the only billion-plus-people consumer market available to both of them: India.

The ostensible battleground is a $3.4 billion deal Indian tycoon Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. stitched up in August to acquire assets of debt-laden local retailer Future Group. Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. is trying to block the transaction.