Now it’s Anil Ambani’s turn to tell employees he’s in charge

Providing another interesting twist in the tussle for control over the Rs 99,000-crore Reliance group, Anil also asked the six directors who resigned on Thursday to continue as before. A board meeting is being convened in the next few days to consider the resignation issue.

Anil also stressed that he was serving at the pleasure of the Reliance Energy board and its shareholders, a signal to Reliance Industries, which is controlled by chairman Mukesh Ambani.

‘‘With Reliance Industries (RIL) acquiring the controlling stake in BSES, it was my honour to be nominated by the RIL board as a director on the board of BSES. Following this, the BSES board elected me as chairman and MD. This decision was unanimously approved by the shareholders of the company at their general body meeting on February 15, 2003,’’ Anil said. BSES was renamed Reliance Energy in February 2004.

There was no mention of Mukesh Ambani in the email. Despite repeated attempts, Reliance Industries officials were not available for comment. Anil Ambani’s email did pay tribute to his father and Reliance group founder Dhirubhai Ambani.

Reliance Energy officials said the directors, who had announced their resignations on November 25, were working but did not elaborate whether they had agreed to take back their resignations.

Reliance Energy is owned about 50% by Reliance Industries (directly and indirectly), 21% by domestic institutional investors, 21% by foreign institutional investors, and the balance 8% by nearly 1,00,000 retail investors.

The six REL directors — Satish Seth, S C Gupta, J P Chalasani, K H Mankad, Prof J Ramachandran, and Amitabh Jhunjhunwala — were considered to be close to Anil Ambani, who has so far declined to comment on developments in the Ambani family or the tussle over ownership issues at Reliance.

In his email, Anil also listed the achievements of REL after he took control two years ago. ‘‘The market capitalisation of Reliance Energy has multiplied 3 times from Rs 3,000 crore to over Rs 10,000 crore; the profits have more than doubled from Rs 162 crore to Rs 367 crore; and the net worth has gone up nearly 3 times from less than Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 6,200 crore,’’ he said.