The Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group has selected KC College auditorium as venue for his companies’ AGMs this year, giving its traditional venue a royal miss.

This would be first time an Resolution Professional (RP) would be chairing a company’s AGM.

As an unwritten rule, almost every Mumbai-headquartered company conducts its AGM (annual general meeting) — a mandatory meeting of shareholders — at the basement auditorium of Birla Matushree Sabhaghar at Marine Lines.

Every year, Birla Matushree’s basement auditorium hosts as much as 30–35 AGMs of top corporates such as Tata, Reliance and Hindustan Unilever, among others. Nearly 400 other programmes including musical concerts, social events and dance concerts are also held here, according to its website.

This venue witnessed some of the biggest announcements from corporate sector such as Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani announcing the company’s first 1:1 bonus issue in 1997.

Later, Mukesh Ambani — the present Chairman and Managing Director of RIL — announced the discovery of natural gas in the Krishna-Godavari basin, launched digital initiatives and telecom firm Reliance Jio Infocomm, and stake sale in oil-to-chemical business to Saudi Aramco among others from the very same dais.

Mukesh Ambani also conducted RIL’s 42nd AGM (post-IPO) at the Birla Matushree on August 12, 2019. However, this year, the KC College auditorium has been chosen for Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group’s AGMs.

According to sources close to the Reliance Group, the change in venue is due to the non-availability of the Birla Matushree auditorium.

On September 30, Anil Ambani will address shareholders of his companies starting with Reliance Capital, followed by Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Power and Reliance Home Finance.

Shareholders of the debt-laden Reliance Communication (RCom) will be addressed by Resolution Professional. In June, the National Company Law Tribunal’s (NCLT) Mumbai bench had appointed Deloitte’s Anish Niranjan Nanavaty as the RP for RCom’s bankruptcy process.

RCom had sought bankruptcy in February after its efforts to sell spectrum to Reliance Jio Infocomm failed.

RCom is presently going through an insolvency process, as financial creditors have made claims worth Rs 57,382 crore from RCom and its two subsidiaries as of June 16. Of this over Rs 7,000 crore is from group companies and over Rs 47,000 crore is from 53 banks including Rs 14,775 crore from two Chinese lenders.

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