Moneycontrol Bureau
A well-read, far-sighted visionary with a ruthless ambition, Jignesh Shah combined luck, skill and a mercurial business sense with a penchant for pushing the envelope a bit too far.
Shah's reputation took a decisive blow with his arrest Wednesday -- which victims of the NSEL scam described as long-overdue -- and is one he will he likely never recover from fully.
Shah's climb was astonishing. After passing out as an electronics engineer, he worked for the BSE, with a team that was in the process of setting up its BOLT system.
Realising early on the potential that existed for a technology firm that understood the nuances of finance closely, Shah, with a partner, set up Financial Technologies, which offered solutions to brokerage firms and exchanges.
Later, FTIL set up commodity futures exchange MCX, the National Spot Exchange and later the MCX-SX currency-and-stock exchange. MCX would at one point go on to become the world's fourth-largest commodity derivatives exchange by trading volumes.
But his rise was always accompanied by questions over the lack of his business ethics as also the increasing clout he enjoyed with people of power.
Thus, if former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was seen as being instrumental in having a licence issued to MCX, incumbent P Chidambaram was the one who launched the exchange.
Speculation also had it that Shah was responsible for Sebi chief CB Bhave and his colleague KM Abraham -- who were known to play hardball during the MCX licence-grant process – not getting term extensions.
It was, however, the unraveling of the payments crisis at NSEL last year that finally brought validity to the questions regarding his business dealings.
The spot exchange -- which was in Shah's own words set up to help farmers manage their stocks and aid price discovery -- turned not just into a haven for speculators and high-net-worth-individuals by offering illegal long-dated contracts, NSEL and its related firms were later discovered to have indulged in serious violations such as allowing trades without collateral and issuing fake warehouse receipts to claim physical stock where none existed.
During the initial course of investigations, Shah could get away with claiming ignorance over the goings-on at NSEL, blaming the management and portraying himself (and his reputation) as the "largest victim of the fraud".
But as further unsavory details come out -- arrested NSEL chief Anjani Shah's affidavit that outlined Shah's involvement and accused him of planning an elaborate fraud (while taking great measures to cover his tracks), as well as the discovery of alleged murky deals between MCX and FTIL – and it appears that finally, Shah may have nowhere to escape.
"The joy is in creation. Founders of a company have to realize they are building an institution that survives beyond individual lives," Shah told the Wall Street Journal last year when asked about the prospect of having to relinquish control at most of the key exchanges that he found -- as is happening currently.
But it may not have been the words of a Warren Buffett-esque manager to whom giving up on self-created wealth comes easy. They were likely words from an ultra-talented achiever who was seeing the noose tighten around him after realizing his ambition had become his own undoing.
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it," Buffett once said. "If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
Perhaps the wisdom of the quote didn't go down enough on the well-read Shah. Or, as Buffett also said, in business as in life, the rear-view mirror is clearer than the windshield.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
How the world came crashing down for Jignesh Shah
Dengan url
https://kesehatanda.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-world-came-crashing-down-for.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
How the world came crashing down for Jignesh Shah
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
How the world came crashing down for Jignesh Shah
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar