The Ambani brothers get ready for a face off yet again.

Ever since the two — Mukesh and Anil Ambani — re-worked their non-compete agreement and came up with a fresh understanding in May 2010, the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries has announced two business ventures which pits it directly against the Anil Ambani group, among others.

The latest being Friday's announcement that Reliance Industries Ltd will buy out the Bharti Enterprises' 74 per cent stake in two insurance joint ventures with AXA — Bharti Axa Life Insurance Co Ltd and Bharti Axa General Insurance Co Ltd. In March, Reliance announced that it was tying up with the D.E. Shaw group, a global investment and technology development firm, to build a financial services business in India.

The Anil Ambani group is into financial services through Reliance Capital, which among other businesses houses two insurance ventures — one for life and the other for general insurance.

Reliance Capital's insurance businesses — Reliance Life Insurance and Reliance General Insurance — are running at a loss. In 2010-11, Reliance Life Insurance reported a renewal premium of Rs 3,536 crore and had funds under management of Rs 17,855 crore.

It posted a loss of Rs 129 crore during the year. In the fourth quarter of FY11, Reliance Life Insurance signed an agreement with Nippon Life for the latter to invest Rs 3,062 crore for a 26 per cent stake.

Reliance General Insurance reported a gross direct premium of Rs 1,655 crore for the year and a loss of Rs 310 crore.

Bharti Axa Life's premium income in 2010-11 was Rs 790 crore, and Bharti Axa General Insurance collected gross direct premium of Rs 550 crore and reported a loss of Rs 170 crore during the year.

Broadband

In June 2010, just a month after signing the fresh agreement, Reliance Industries picked up a stake in Infotel Broadband Services (P) Ltd, which had emerged a successful bidder in all the 22 circles of the auction for broadband wireless access spectrum.

Reliance said it would invest about Rs 4,800 crore in Infotel and increase its holding to 95 per cent.

The Anil Ambani group is into telecommunications with both CDMA and GSM technologies and also offers broadband wireless access services.

In an agreement in June 2005 that brought to an end a bitter feud between the brothers, Mr Mukesh Ambani retained Reliance Industries with its petroleum and petrochemicals businesses, while the telecommunications, financial services and power generation businesses went to Mr Anil Ambani. The two signed a non-compete agreement which was to be valid for five years, but re-worked it in May last year. The new agreement cancelled all the then existing non-compete clauses. The only area in which Mr Mukesh Ambani would not compete with his brother was in gas-based power generation, till March 31, 2022.

There have been reports of Reliance Industries entering the power generation business (non-gas based), but nothing concrete has been announced so far.

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