MERRY CHRISTMAS----THERMAX----

MIND BOGGLING YET…

I WAS AMAZED TO SEE THE PRICE ROCKETED TO CREATE ENOUGH TURBULENCE IN ME.

I BOUGHT 1000 SHARES OF THERMAX FOR Rs 38.65, 15 YEARS BACK,

TODAY, THE PRICE OF THERMAX IS Rs 1050/- OF Rs 2/- FACE VALUE (EQUAL TO Rs 5150/-). IN OTHER WORDS, ONE LAKH INVESTED HAS BECOME MORE THAN 66 LAKHS.

EVEN RECENTLY, 2-3 YEARS BACK, I FOUND MARKSAN AT Rs 2.30 NOW IT IS QUOTING Rs 64/-.

ALSO FOUND MORARJEE TEXTILES AT Rs 7.0 NOW TOUCHED A HIGH OF Rs 61, INDOCOUNT INDUSTRIES AT Rs 7.0 NOW TOUCHED A HIGH OF Rs 390/-.

BUT THE ABOVE THREE WERE JUST MEMORIES BUT NO PARTICIPATION……

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND ALL INVESTORS & TRADERS…

Anoyara Khatun “Girl Heroes”-Malala Yousafzai Fund !!!

From a victim of human trafficking to a global hero

Anoyara Khatun was a victim of trafficking, but is now a global hero who has foiled numerous attempts of unscrupulous men to lure away girls from West Bengal's remote villages

Kamalika Ghosh  

December 20, 2014 Last Updated at 00:29 IST

Anoyara Khatun (extreme right) has rebuilt her life from the ashes of her past and is now an activist who leads a battalion of children fighting trafficking

The serene hinterlands of West Bengal hide within their vast expanse a secret so dark, so terrible, that people hesitate to talk about it. It concerns their daughters. It also concerns unscrupulous men who tempt parents into sending their young girls from their homes to a dream life of fashionable clothes and good salaries — and disaster. What they don’t say is another story. Anoyara Khatun knows that story well.

What immediately transfixes you about the 17-year-old Khatun is the sparkling pair of eyes, full of hope and grit. Trafficked at the tender age of 12, the girl from one of the remotest village of Bengal, Chhoto Askara, does not intend to look back at the dark days of the past. She has rebuilt her life from the ashes of her past and is now an activist who leads a battalion of children fighting trafficking,child marriage and child labour in their own meaningful ways. She requests me not to ask her questions about her past, about her trauma and how she was rescued.

Khatun is one of the “Girl Heroes” from across the world that the Malala Yousafzai Fund recently celebrated for 30 days — from October 11 to November 9 — as beacons of “exemplary courage and leadership”. So far, Khatun has foiled about 50 child marriages and 85 trafficking attempts. She has also successfully managed to get around 200 dropouts back to school. The young girl is the head of as many as 80 children’s groups across 55 villages in Sandeshkhali. These groups were formed by the Dhagagia Social Welfare Society, or DSWS, and Save the Children Trust (a donor organisation) in the effort to  rid the villages of the problem of child trafficking. “I had decided very early on that I shall not just remain an activist. I wanted to take up a leadership position,” smiles the teenager whose hobbies are to write poetry and songs.

Once she led a group of children at night to save a girl from the clutches of traffickers. “People in the villages go to bed by eight and children are not allowed to go out after that, but I sneaked out,” she recounts. “I took along some friends and chased the traffickers across the village, jumped canals and finally caught them. It was a huge risk. But we succeeded in saving the girl.”

Sandeshkhali is around two hours’ drive from Kolkata. Here DSWS and Save the Children Trust have worked relentlessly for years. “The work has been tough,” says Hriday Chand Ghosh, secretary of DSWS. “When we started, the main impediment was the acute lack of awareness among parents.”

Ghosh narrates the ghastly incident of how a girl from the village was trafficked to Delhi and how her body was burnt using hot iron rods. The girl was rescued by DSWS. He also mentions another incident where a trafficker had approached some parents with a photo album that had pictures showing well-dressed girls sharing a place at the dining table with their employers. “What we have seen in most cases is that these children are paid the promised salary in the first couple of months of employment, and then the salaries stop,” says Ghosh. I get an insight into the magnitude of the problem when, during my conversation with Ghosh, the hapless parents of two missing girls come knocking on his door.

To stop the children of the villages from falling into the traffickers’ trap, Ghosh and his co-workers took up extensive sensitisation programmes. Apart from parents, the panchayat members, police and the schools were involved in the awareness programmes. “We have formed children’s groups in the various villages in and around Sandeshkhali. These groups have children from the mainstream as well as children who have been rescued from traffickers, children who worked as domestic helps and others who have survived abuse,” says Ghosh. There is also the Child Protection Committee (CPC), comprising panchayat members, police officers, village elders, teachers, parents and welfare workers. Whenever a stranger is sighted in the locality, members of the children’s groups follow them to find out what their intentions are. If that person is trying to take a girl away from her home, they try coaxing the girl not to leave. They then try to reason it out with the parents. If the situation gets out of hand, the youngsters approach CPC for help.

Khatun is one of the 'Girl Heroes' from across the world that the Malala Yousafzai Fund recently celebrated for 30 days—from October 11 to November 9—as beacons of 'exemplary courage and leadership'

Children, explains Khatun, are the first ones who know what is happening in their localities. “When an unknown person enters the villages, most of the children are out playing. One informs another to convey to the other children that he should be followed,” says Khatun. “After the information has reached everybody, we congregate at a chosen place, decide the course of action and get to work.”

Back from a tour of Delhi where she met Minorities Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla, this fighter of a girl, who is pursuing her graduation studies at Humayun Kabir Mahavidyalaya, believes that it is society that makes a distinction between a son and daughter. Nominated for the International Peace Prize, 2012, and recently felicitated by West Bengal Minister of State for Women and Child Welfare Shashi Panja, this reticent girl does not care much for the limelight. “Earlier, I never gave interviews. If you had come a year or two back, I would have refused to talk. I feared the media attention might spoil my work. I always thought it better to be a nameless, faceless force that brings about changes in the system. The work is important, not me,” she declares with maturity beyond her years.

Her warm nature is what endears her to the village elders and children alike. A drive down the narrow lanes to one of the Multi-Activity Centres, where school dropouts are oriented to education, gives you a fair idea of her popularity. When she reaches the place, the children there circle their “Didi”. “Eto din ashoni keno (Why did you not visit us for so long?),” they ask.

At these centres, school dropouts and rescued children are trained for schooling for three or four months and then enrolled in the nearby schools. “Apart from these centres, we also have six vocational training centres, where slightly older rescued girls who have had primary education and are hesitant about going back to primary classes are tutored in tailoring and knitting,” says Ghosh, who adds that poverty is a driving force behind the child abuse.

Apart from children, the trust has also tried to involve mothers in various self-help schemes. Many women now work with small groups providing mid-day meals to schools. After the destruction wreaked by cyclone Aila in 2009, many women were given the chance to earn a living at nurseries when social organisations took up the initiative to plant mangrove trees. “We can proudly say that even after a disaster like Aila, there hasn’t been a single case of child migration in the 50 villages that we worked in,” say Khatun and Ghosh almost simultaneously.

From what it was around a decade back, the situation has become relatively better in these villages. But there is still a long way to go. “Strengthening the community-based child-protection mechanism by forming children’s committees under the government’s Integrated Child Protection Scheme will be our action plan,” says Jatin Mondar, programme manager, Save the Children, West Bengal State unit. “The involvement of children in this exercise should be stressed with the objective of including their voice in developing a strong social safety and protection network against child trafficking.”

For every Malala, there are thousands of Khatuns who have turned their pain into their greatest strength. Transforming themselves from victim to victor, these children and child rights activists have silently and tirelessly worked to tell the world, as Khatun wrote in one of her poems, that they might be children but they are humans too: “Sishu hole o manush amra”.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/specials/from-a-victim-of-human-trafficking-to-a-global-hero-114121900567_1.html

PUTIN EMOTIONAL SPEECH...!!!!

Putin says Russia economy will be cured but offers no remedy

He said the actions of the central bank and government had been 'adequate' in a crisis he blamed on external factors

Reuters  |  Moscow  

December 18, 2014 Last Updated at 16:41 IST

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia's economy would inevitably rebound after the rouble's dramatic slide this year but offered no remedy to a deepening financial crisis.

Under pressure to show he has a plan to fix the economy, Putin told an end-of-year news conference the actions of the central bank and government had been "adequate" in a crisis he blamed on external factors.

But hinting at internal divisions, he said more measures were needed and the central bank should have halted foreign exchange interventions to support the rouble sooner. Earlier, more decisive action by the central bank, he implied, might have made this week's big interest rate rise unnecessary.

The economy is heading into recession in what one minister called a "perfect storm" of low oil prices, Western sanctions in the Ukraine crisis and global economic problems. The rouble has fallen about 45 percent against the dollar this year.

"If the situation develops unfavourably, we will have to amend our plans. Beyond doubt, we will have to cut some (spending). But a positive turn and emergence from the current situation are inevitable," Putin said.

"The growth of the global economy will continue and our economy will rebound from the current situation," he said, sitting at a large desk and looking confident as he spoke to a studio audience and live on television.

He said Russia must diversify its economy to reduce dependence on oil, its major export and a key source of state income, and a recovery could start at some point next year.

But he stuck largely to broad promises rather than going into details and announced no major new proposals. He has said many times during 15 years in power that he will reduce Russia's reliance on energy exports but has failed to do so.

The rouble slipped as he spoke, moving to around 3 percent weaker on the day. The bank increased its key lending rate by 6.5 percentage points to 17 percent on Tuesday, and has spent more than $80 billion trying to shore up the rouble this year, but to little avail.

HEADS TO ROLL?

Analysts said Putin's assessment of the government and central bank's performance was lukewarm and could indicate that heads would roll.

"All this implies pretty big divisions within the administration as to how to react to the crisis and pressure on the rouble," Timothy Ash, head of emerging market research at Standard Bank in London, said in a note.

A prominent opponent, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, said the crisis showed Putin had mismanaged the economy and his problems would increase because prices are expected to surge next year because of the rouble's weakness.

"Russia is going into decline," Kasyanov told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday, suggesting Putin should accept that "he needs an exit strategy" to leave power.

Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said in a newspaper interview the Western sanctions were likely to last "a very long time" and Russia was paying the price for failing to carry out structural reforms, describing events as "the perfect storm".

But Putin said: "Under the most unfavourable external economic scenario, this situation may go on for about two years. But it may also start improving in the first quarter, in the middle, at the end of the next year."

Opinion polls show Putin has high popularity ratings since annexing the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in March, but the rouble's decline and Russia's slide towards recession could erode faith in Putin's ability to provide financial stability.

Asked about Ukraine, where Russia has irked the West by backing separatists fighting government forces in the east, Putin said Moscow wanted to restore political unity and denied any link between the conflict and Russia's economic problems.

He said he wanted the conflict, in which more than 4,700 people have been killed, resolved by political means. But he criticised NATO over its eastward expansion following the fall of the Berlin Wall and said Kiev had been wrong to use forces against the separatists.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/reuters/putin-says-russia-economy-will-be-cured-but-offers-no-remedy-114121800772_1.html

Black money in India: HSBC list has 628 names, top amount $18 mnAppu Esthose Suresh | New Delhi | Updated: Oct 26 2014, 13:47 ISTOnly about a fifth of the individuals or entities named in the so-called HSBC black money list on India of alleged foreign account holders have acknowledged their ownership of the accounts. These individuals or entities — 136 in number — have either paid, or are in the process of paying, penalties for concealing incomes.The HSBC black money list contains names and holdings of individuals or entities with accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC's Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank. The information was stolen from the bank by a former employee on a particular day in 2006. The list was given to India by France in June 2011.According to documents accessed by The Indian Express, the HSBC list contains names of 628 Indian individuals or entities. The Income Tax Department has so far found matches between names and addresses in 418 cases. In 282 of these cases, however, either the account number or the balance in the account is not available.In general, the list contains four sets of information: name, address, account number and balance.Of the 136 individuals or entities who have acknowledged the accounts, many have pleaded that they were not aware of their existence, but would pay the tax and penalty due, senior I-T officers involved in the investigation said. Many of these 136 accounts show zero balance.The addresses against 12 of the 418 names in the list belong to Kolkata. However, only six have confirmed that the account belongs to them.The highest amount in the list is $ 18 million, allegedly belonging to two top industrialists.The most common surnames on the list are Mehta and Patel.French authorities had secured the list from software technologist Hervé Falciani, who has been collaborating with several European countries tracking suspected tax evaders with accounts in Swiss banks. The list contains alleged account data on the date Falciani procured them.The Indian Express was the first to report in August 2011 that the French had handed over to India the list of HSBC account holders of Indian origin. The government is in the process of sending a list of 50 names from the 136 to Swiss authorities to confirm the authenticity of the information.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/black-money-in-india-hsbc-list-has-628-names-top-amount-18-mn/1301633

Sivasankaran...Astute deal maker, now a bankrupt entrepreneur...!!!!

C Sivasankaran: Once the country's most astute deal maker, now a bankrupt entrepreneur
Business Standard traces the life and times of the maverick businessmanSurajeet Das Gupta, Bhupesh Bhandari, TE Narasimhan & Gireesh Babu  |  New Delhi/ Chennai  

September 6, 2014 Last Updated at 00:20 IST

On August 26, the Supreme Court of Seychelles declared Chinnakannan Sivasankaran, better known as Siva, bankrupt. An official receiver for Siva's global estate was appointed. It will be this person's job to compile a list of Siva's assets - homes, aircraft, yachts and other baubles - and sell them to pay back his creditors. Amongst Siva's creditors, the largest is BMIC, a Bahrain Telecom, or Batelco, company. In a statement issued from Manama in Bahrain, Batelco CEO Alan Whelan said that the bankruptcy will not "thwart our determination to recover the substantial monies that he owes us". Siva is learnt to have sounded out some Chennai lawyers to find out the implications for his assets in India.

For Siva, the India-born 58-year-old citizen of Seychelles, this was actually his second brush with bankruptcy in less than a year. In October 2013, WinWinD, his Finland-headquartered wind turbine venture, submitted a voluntary bankruptcy petition because it had "been incurring heavy losses for the past several years" and its debts had ballooned to around ^300 million. "The efforts of WinWinD in trying to arrange for necessary funding and approval for restructuring process has not been successful and hence this decision," the company said at that time.

Disbelief about the news of the bankruptcy looms large in Siva's native Chennai. One industry representative insists that when he spoke to Siva last week, he was "cool and calm, and showed no sign of agitation". Siva could not be reached for this report. His senior executives in India too were not available for comment. The Siva group's website still claims that it is a $3-billion conglomerate with interests in "oil palm, commodities trading [minerals], agro exports, shipping and logistics, wind energy, realty & hospitality and education/e-learning", but it is clear that it will take Siva some effort from here to restore his glory.

Not so long ago, Siva was known as the country's most astute deal-maker (to close a deal, he could leave India for the United States in an hour's time), the serial entrepreneur with the Midas touch, who made obscene sums of money in all deals, except one (much of it later). Born on July 29, 1956, Siva started his innings in business in 1985 after he purchased Sterling Computers from Robert Amritraj, father of former tennis star Vijay Amritraj, and launched personal computers for as little as Rs 33,000 - rival machines cost as much as Rs 80,000 at that time. Success was instant. Sterling was catapulted to the top three computer companies of India. Siva would now operate out of the presidential suites of the Ritz-Carlton and Pan Pacific hotels in Singapore and developed a fondness for Rolex gold watches, Montblanc pens and fine food. But it was telecom that would give Siva's business - and reputation - a big boost and ultimately cause him a great deal of heartburn.

In 1992, Siva won a five-year contract from state-owned MTNL, which ran telecom services in Delhi and Mumbai, to print Yellow Pages in its directory for a period of five years. (Allegations of favouritism were made at MTNL at that time for awarding the contract to Siva, but nothing came out of them.) It took Siva little time to sense that the telecom sector would soon be thrown open to the private sector. The possibilities thrilled him. Siva shifted base from Chennai to New Delhi, operating out of a five-star hotel. In 2004, Siva managed to get cellular telephony licences for Delhi and three other telecom circles: Uttar Pradesh (east), Haryana and Rajasthan. Within no time, he sold these licences to his old acquaintance from Chennai, Shashi Ruia of Essar, for $105 million. "He was sharp, well-informed on telecom, a keen negotiator and a man of honour when the deal was done," Ruia had told Business Standard in mid-2004.

MC Hammer

All of a sudden, Siva was loaded. In 1996, he purchased rapper MC Hammer's house in Fremont, California, to set up his base in the United States. The same year, he started to acquire shares in Sunil Mittal's Bharti Telecom. By early 1997, he was sitting on around 10 per cent in the company and demanded a slot on its board of directors. Mittal, no less a negotiator, refused. Eventually, Siva sold the shares to Mittal at Rs 90 apiece; his acquisition cost had been Rs 100. This was the only instance when Siva lost money. But he was still rich. Siva in 1997 bailed out an Indian-owned bank in Thailand along with Hong Kong-based tycoon Hari Harilela. Meanwhile, the Ruias offered him shares in Tamilnad Mercantile Bank. But the Nadar community, which owned the bank, opposed the deal. Two years later, in mid-1999, it bought out Siva's stake. His net gain in the transaction was substantial. Siva next sold Dishnet DSL, the country's first internet DSL provider he had launched in 1998, toVSNL for Rs 270 crore. He even wrote to Rebecca Mark, the CEO of Enron India, to buy the troubled energy company's India business for Rs 1!

Siva found it hard to stay away from telecom. He bought the licence for Tamil Nadu and then acquired the one for Chennai from RPG Cellular. From here, he decided to expand his footprint. In March 2004, Siva applied for the licence in the eight circles of Madhya Pradesh, Assam, North East, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Letters of intent were issued on April 6. The company submitted compliance to the letters of intent on April 20 for seven circles, and sought additional time for Madhya Pradesh. The next day, the company applied for licences for Uttar Pradesh (east) and Uttar Pradesh (west) as well. On May 7, licences were issued for all the circles, except Madhya Pradesh. Then, on May 26, Dayanidhi Maran took over as the Union telecom minister. Siva was now bombarded with queries from the department of telecommunications. His expansion plans got badly stuck at Sanchar Bhawan, the DoT headquarters. "The clarifications sought, besides being vague, were also irrelevant for consideration of application for grant of the universal licence," the Shivraj Patil Committee appointed to report "on the examination of appropriateness of procedures followed by department of telecommunications in issuance of licences and allocation of spectrum during the period 2001-2009" said in January 2011.

More was in store for Siva. In June 2004, one month after Maran had become the telecom minister, Siva had entered into an agreement with Hutchison to sell his Tamil Nadu operations for Rs 1,200 crore - this would have given him the funds to roll out in the rest of the country. The rule book said that any transfer of equity would require the assent of DoT. Thus, on June 28, Siva sought DoT's approval for the stake sale, and provided all relevant documents by August 14. But DoT did not give its nod, nor did it provide any reason for the inactivity. On March 3, 2005, Dayanidhi Maran sent the file back on the pretext that a report on mergers and acquisitions was awaited. The same month, Siva cancelled the deal.

It later also came to light that state-owned BSNL, during those days, did not provide interconnectivity to Siva's Aircel. In 2005, BSNL was the dominant provider of fixed-line services with 40 per cent of the 40 million subscribers, and was a sizeable player in mobile services too with 23 per cent of the 48 million connections. If BSNL did not provide connectivity to any operator, it was doomed. Finally, in August 2005, BSNL did relent and agreed to give Aircel access to points of interconnection, but only in 76 of the 461 points. In December 2005, Siva announced that he would sell Aircel to Maxis of Malaysia, promoted by Tatparanandam Ananda Krishna, a Malaysian of Sri Lankan origin. In March 2006, Maxis informed its shareholders that the Aircel deal had been completed. Things now began to move fast at the DoT headquarters at Sanchar Bhawan. All the clearances came quickly.

Siva was known to be close to the leadership of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Maran's party, as well as Murasoli Maran, the minister's father. Legend has it that at an industry interaction in 1989, where other businessmen were paying inane homilies, Siva's plain-speak made quite an impact on the chief minister and DMK chief, M Karunanidhi. Then why did Maran turn against Siva? Unconfirmed reports suggest that Maran did not like Siva's closeness to Ratan Tata, then Tata Sons chairman. Siva had helped Tata Teleservices source cheap equipment for its rollout by playing off a US multinational against a European giant. He subsequently bought 10 per cent in Tata Teleservices. On the other hand, there was a "chemistry problem" between Tata and Maran. It reportedly arose when Tata decided to get into DTH. The Sun TV network also had an eye on the space and was keen to tie up with Tata. But Tata had decided to go ahead with The British Sky Broadcasting Group.

On Monday, June 6, 2011, Siva dropped a bombshell when he came to the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters in New Delhi and claimed that he was forced by the Maran brothers, Dayanidhi and Kalanithi, to sell Aircel to Maxis. He provided CBI with a list of 10 witnesses, most of them based abroad, to support his charge: bankers, venture capitalists and lawyers. Maran refuted the allegation and said newspaper reports "clearly prove that this particular company was parading itself even before I became the telecom minister". But that didn't cut much ice. Last week, CBI filed a charge sheet saying that the Marans received Rs 742 crore for coercing Siva to sell Aircel to Maxis in the garb of investments in Sun Direct (the DTH operator) and South Asia FM.

Even after he had sold Aircel, Siva continued to nurture telecom dreams. The telecom ministry, now under Andimuthu Raja, had declared its intent to hand out more licences on first-come, first-served basis. The price for a pan-India licence (22 telecom circles) was Rs 1,658 crore. One of the companies to get those controversy-ridden licences was STel. (It had got six circles: Orissa, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Northeast, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir). Siva had acquired 51 per cent of it. While there were rumblings that licences had been handed out by Raja at throwaway prices, Siva, in November 2007 wrote to Mamohan Singh, then prime minister, that he would pay the government a revenue share of Rs 6,000 crore over 10 years for a pan-India licence. A month later, it raised the offer to Rs 13,752 crore. Using this as the benchmark, the Comptroller & Auditor General said in its damning report the loss to the government in the spectrum allocation came to Rs 67,364 crore. In September 2011, it transpired that there wasn't complete agreement in the CAG team over the calculation because the company had subsequently withdrawn the offer.

Batelco bought 49 per cent in STel in 2009 for Rs 1,000 crore. By then, opposition to the allotment of inexpensive spectrum had gathered momentum. The United Progressive Alliance government came under fire. Raja was removed. Several people, including Raja, were taken into custody. Finally, in February 2012, the Supreme Court cancelled all the 122 licences allotted by Raja. STel, which had about 3.6 million subscribers in five circles, had no option but to shut shop. That is when BMIC, which owned 42.7 per cent in the company, invoked the "put" option under which in an exigency like this Siva had to buy out its stake at the price at which it had been bought: $212 million. BMICsays Siva never paid up. According to one account, Siva wrote to Singh, then prime minister, within days of the Supreme Court verdict to demand Rs 1,700 crore for surrendering the licences. All his entreaties fell on deaf ears. Last month, BMIC got an order from an English high court to freeze Siva's assets worldwide. A few days later, Siva was declared bankrupt in Seychelles.

What went wrong? An answer possibly resides on the Siva group website. "Foresight is a gift," it says. "And when you combine it with skill and commercial acumen, the result is often breathtaking."

THE SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR No conversation with Siva can end without exchanging notes on food. Seafood is his all-time favourite. At meals, he would serve the finest of the world cuisine. Overindulgence would frequently lead to serious guilt pangs. That propelled Siva to foray into the health business. In the early 1990s, when he was operating out of a five-star hotel in New Delhi, Siva had two snazzy treadmills installed in his suite. Several unsuspecting visitors were made to use them. He then started a state-of-the-art gym in Chennai which was used by top cricketers. In the same vein, he set up a chain of health-food restaurants that were designed like a sushi bar. He chose to call them Aiwo. Two were opened in Singapore and one in Chennai. Though Siva wanted to take it global, Aiwo has morphed into a weight-loss clinic called Ken, with a branch each in Mumbai and Chennai. He even invested in the Chiva Som Resort in Thailand, Asia's first spa destination. In April 2004, Siva bought coffee chain Barista from Turner Morrison and Tata Sons for around Rs 65 crore. He was quite charged up with the acquisition. He told Business Standard that he would make Barista "the Starbucks of India" and would expand its network from 100 outlets to 3,000 in three years' time, including one in this newspaper's office. He also wanted to expand the menu to include falafel and sushi. Before three years passed, he had sold Barista to Lavazza of Italy for $100 million because he had decided to "focus and expand in the business of renewable energy". That quest made him acquire WinWinD in 2006. In 2007, he bought 49 per cent into Sahara group's Aamby Valleyproject, on the condition that Sahara would buy back his shares at a pre-determined price three years later. He got Rs 1,680 crore from the sale. In 2008, Siva bought a Norwegian shipping company called JB Ugland Shipping for around $300 million. An information memorandum for a private placement of debentures by Siva Ventures in June 2009 disclosed that Siva had taken the 931-hectare Coetivy Island in Seychelles, 290 km south of Mahe, on a 99-year lease to develop a mega township. That is what seems to have taken Siva to that country. For all his profitable deals, Siva left behind a trail of failed ventures. He had tied up with Subhash Chandraof Essel to get into DTH but the project never got off the ground. He had announced a $1-billion undersea cable line from Chennai to Guam but Sunil Mittal got a similar project up and running first, which ended the viability of Siva's plan. At various times, he is known to have dropped plans to buy VSNL from the government (the Tata group bagged it), set up a 2,500-apartment residential complex in Chennai, erect a chemicals plant at Cuddalore and acquire a factory to make tungsten for defence. Serial entrepreneur for sure, but the tag would often hurt Siva when he went out to recruit people. "He looks at each business for not more than five years," says a Chennai-based industry watcher. "That's why the best talent doesn't join him." http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/c-sivasankaran-once-the-country-s-most-astute-deal-maker-now-a-bankrupt-entrepreneur-114090501264_1.html