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Key statistics on Reliance group

Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of the Reliance group, India's largest conglomerate by sales, died late on Saturday at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai where he was in intensive care for 12 days after suffering a stroke.

The 69-year-old Ambani was widely acclaimed as the father of India's stock market culture. He broke the monopoly of banks as the source of corporate financing by raising tens of millions of dollars from retail investors.

The company he founded, petrochemicals major Reliance Industries, made an initial public offering in 1977 at a time when retail investors shunned stock markets. Today Reliance has over 3.5 million shareholders, making it one of the most widely held stocks in the world.

The combined sales of the Reliance group, which has interests ranging from petrochemicals and oil to telecommunications and power, account for nearly three per cent of India's gross domestic product.

The aggregate market value of the four listed companies in the Reliance conglomerate is about $9 billion.

Reliance Petroleum, which operates the world's largest grassroots refinery, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure, an engineering firm, and financial services provider Reliance Capital are the other publicly listed companies.

The Reliance group owns a 64 per cent stake in Reliance Petroleum, a 26 per cent stake in unlisted Reliance Telecom and 45 per cent of Reliance Infocom, which is also not listed. Reliance Infocom is the umbrella company for the group's expansion into telecom and information technology. Reliance Telecom has licences for providing basic and cellular telecom services.

Reliance Telecom has operations in 86 towns and a subscriber base of 187,000 users. Reliance Infocom is building a network connecting 115 cities via a 60,000-km (37,280 mile) fibre optic cable backbone.

The following are key facts and statistics on the Reliance group.

Aggregate financial statistics of listed companies (as on March 31, 2002)

• Aggregate turnover: Rs 600 billion ($12.3 billion).
• Net profit: Rs 46 billion.
• Total assets: Rs 550 billion.

Assets
Reliance Industries:

• 25 offshore and onshore oil and gas exploration and production blocks, covering an area of 175,000 sq km.
• World's largest paraxylene plant at 1.4 million tonnes per year, making Reliance the world's third-largest producer.
• World's fourth-largest purified terephthalic acid maker with capacity of more than one million tonnes per year.
• World's sixth-largest polypropylene capacity of one million tonnes per year.
• A 26 per cent shareholding in Reliance Telecom which offers basic and cellular services to an area covering a third of the country and a third of India's one billion-plus population.
• A 45 per cent stake in Reliance Infocom, which is spending $5 billion to set up a nationwide broadband telecommunications network to offer the whole range of voice and data services.

The Reliance group owns:

• A 27 per cent holding in power utility BSES Ltd.
• A 30 per cent stake in an oil and gas exploration joint venture with state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the BG Group.
• A 64 per cent stake in Reliance Petroleum, the fifth-largest refinery in the world with the capacity to produce 27 million tonnes per year of petroleum products.

• Shareholding Profile

• RIL has over 3.5 million shareholders.
• In Reliance Industries, the Ambanis own a 44 per cent stake, institutional investors own 32 per cent and the remaining 24 per cent is owned by other shareholders.
• Reliance group owns 64 per cent in Reliance Petroleum, institutional investors 13 per cent and other shareholders 23 per cent.

Source: Company data and Bombay Stock Exchange Web site

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