Why the failed Aramco deal’s good for Ambani and three cheers for telecoms tariff hike

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Editor's note: Furquan here. Gautam Adani is now the richest Indian, and not Mukesh Ambani. It's still an open race as these two billionaires bet on new sectors to drive growth in the coming years. Ambani is surely not betting on his oil-to-chemicals business, as reflected in the deal with Aramco being called off. Equally interesting was the tariff hike by telecom companies. It's good news, not just for them but for banks and investors too. Read on. Reliance-Aramco deal was long dead When Mukesh Ambani – on 24 June 2021 – made public his plans to go carbon neutral by 2035, the fate of the long overdue stake sale in the oil-to-chemical (O2C) business to Saudi Aramco was effectively sealed. Within months of the announcement, the deal was called off. Aramco had signed a non-binding letter of intent in August 2019 for a potential 20% stake in Reliance Industries’s O2C unit, valued at about $15 billion. The deal would have fetched Reliance somewhere around Rs 1 lakh crore (approximately $1.3 billion) – taking care of a sizable chunk of its then …