How Vinod Rai failed IDFC

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Editor's note: In 2013, when Vinod Rai stepped down as the 11th Comptroller and Auditor General of India, he was nothing short of a celebrity—a man who had exposed “scams” in allocations of 2G spectrum and coal blocks, which played no small part in the defeat of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in the 2014 general elections. Rai was then hailed as a demigod of India’s anti-corruption brigade. Less than a decade later, Rai is now better known as the much maligned former chairman of IDFC Ltd, a holding company with stakes in various financial companies. On 22 September, concerted action on the part of the company’s shareholders forced him to step down. They were frustrated with IDFC’s languishing stock, and held the 73-year-old former bureaucrat responsible.  The anger of shareholders was not completely misplaced—they had lost 20.2% on their holdings since 1 October 2015, when IDFC spun its lending business off into a separate entity, along with putting in place a complex web of holding structures. When looked at in comparison with the 121% gain made by the Nifty50 index in …