 |  | India's Ambani brothers, Mukesh Ambani (left) and Anil Ambani (right), are at loggerheads and the legal battle will begin on Tuesday. -- PHOTO: AFP |
NEW DELHI - A LONG-AWAITED legal face-off between the billionaire Ambani brothers in India's highest court begins on Tuesday in a corporate battle that has transfixed the nation.
The two sides have drafted top lawyers to argue the gas supply case, which pits India's biggest private sector company Reliance Industries Ltd, led by Mukesh Ambani, against Reliance Natural Resources Ltd, headed by Anil.
A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan will hear the case in which billions of dollars are at stake for the two companies.
In the lead-up to the hearing, younger brother Anil, 50, has fired almost daily volleys at his elder sibling Mukesh, 52, over the gas pricing row which stems from a 2005 family pact splitting their corporate empire.
Anil is demanding the honouring of a 2005 settlement brokered by their mother that would allow his company to buy gas from Mukesh at 44 per cent below the government-set rate.
Mukesh, India's wealthest man, is insisting the government price must prevail, after a lower court upheld Anil's arguments and Mukesh appealed to the Supreme Court, and rebuffed a bid earlier this month by Anil to patch things up. -- AFP
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