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Ricoh: A Fraud's Story.

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     Yes, you’re right. The title does seem similar to that of one of Richard Gere’s finer movies, Hachiko: A Dog’s Story (or the subsequently abbreviated Hachi: A Dog’s Tale). The similarities, however, between the Akita and the Japanese giant, Ricoh end there. For, while Hachiko was loyal to his master until his last dying breath, Ricoh’s Indian subsidiary didn’t exactly share that trait. In fact, as the past few years have evidenced, Ricoh India has lost no occasion to rip off its shareholders and leave them high and dry.      When it comes to high standards of corporate governance and good management practices, Japanese companies have always been placed on a pedestal and managed to live up to their high standards. All that, however, has changed over the course of the past decade. Be it Toshiba’s overstated profits, Olympus’ fishy acquisitions to brush its investment losses under the carpet, Mitsubishi’s fuel economy scandal or even Taka...
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PVR Cinemas: Showdown On The Silver Screen.

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     As the sun threw its rays across the early morning sky, the board of directors of PVR Ltd. was in a closed – doors meeting at the company’s Gurgaon headquarters. Over the past few months, rumours had been doing the rounds of the markets that the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s (ADAG) subsidiary company, Reliance MediaWorks was looking to offload a controlling stake in its multiplex operator, Big Cinemas. Big Cinemas, however, was a loss – making company and its acquirer would have to turn it around for the acquisition to be value – accretive. Wild speculation had surrounded the entire episode but in September 2014, some clarity emerged when ADAG invited bids for Big Cinemas. PVR, hungry for growth and expansion, had thrown its hat into the ring, along with some other biggies such as INOX Leisure, Carnival Films, Provident Equity Partners (a US – based private equity firm) and Navis Capital (a Malaysian private equity fund).      Two days a...
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The Interloper.

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     Elliott. Perhaps no other name strikes as much fear into the heart of an underperforming or poorly managed company. For years, Paul Singer and his band of merry men have circled and attacked companies in play, companies in the midst of management overhauls and companies that have performed well below their full potential to take on the bidders and managements and enforce a higher offer price or change in management. All of Elliott’s targets seem to have had a common characteristic – a stock price well below where it should have been.      Elliott’s approach is opportunistic and far from friendly, to say the very least. It takes sizeable stakes in companies that are vulnerable and valued by the market at far lower levels than they deserve, and then launches public campaigns and attacks against the company managements, goading them to improve financial performance, sell underperforming divisions or non-core assets, buy back shares, pay more d...
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