Has Rashesh Shah’s Edelweiss lost its way?

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Editor's note: On 25 March, the Edelweiss Group’s asset reconstruction business bought over the Rs 247 crore outstanding principals of loans availed by Future Retail and Asian Hotels North—a move that further cemented its place at the top of India’s asset reconstruction space.  Edelweiss ARC has over Rs 42,000 crore worth of such assets under management. A large chunk of this comes from the likes of Essar Steel and Bhushan Steel, whose loans it acquired around 2015 and 2016. This number puts it way ahead of its competitors.  That in itself is large enough, one would think, for Rashesh Shah, the 58-year-old founder of the Edelweiss Group, to sit pretty. Yet it is the sizable assets of his ARC business that are proving to be the group’s Achilles’ heel, with much higher finance costs than the rest of the group. This has impacted investor sentiment. The markets are punishing the group’s listed entity, Edelweiss Financial Services; its share prices are down 57% in the last two and a half years. In the same period, shares of its peer Bajaj Finserv are up …