This is not the first time India’s modern retail pioneer—Future Group founder and CEO Kishore Biyani—has staked his kingdom. Just eight years back, he landed in enough of a tight spot that he had to sell parts of a business empire that he’d painstakingly built over decades. This time around too, he doubled down his bets in business by pledging ownership equity at a time when his companies are loaded with debt.
The man is now, miraculously, just a few steps away from losing control.
On 30 March, what can only be qualified as the hand of god saved Kishore Biyani. In an unprecedented move, the Mumbai High Court restrained IDBI Trusteeship from selling shares of the Rs 21,288 crore Future Retail Ltd, which was pledged to the lender as collateral for a loan Biyani had taken. The court judgement caught legal pundits by surprise as it went against all tenets of free markets.
If IDBI had sold those shares, it may well have hastened a huge crisis for Biyani