I saw Guru last week - what a fabulous movie! Even if it hadn't had the build-up and even if you had never heard of Dhirubhai Ambani, it was a great story. And Abhishek finally stopped being Abhishek - now, he's really an actor. I guess that's what a great director does - turn a star into an actor.
But, be that as it may, the story made me think about the Ambanis and the split in Reliance, about how all family businesses are bound to unwind over time, and how this unwinding will provide a tremendous boost to world growth.
It may seem remarkable but even today, nearly 90 per cent of all businesses in the world are family businesses, which cumulatively produce a huge chunk of global GDP.
But, as I see it, family businesses are really a 17th century structure, which began to decline with the advent of stock exchanges, enabling entrepreneurs to reach out to the unknown public for capital.
The oldest stock exchange in the world is (reportedly) the Amsterdam stock exchange, which was "set up in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company for dealings in its printed stocks and bonds".
Over the next few hundred years, stock exchanges grew dramatically in scale and importance, and today are used by enterprises everywhere to raise capital. Clearly, the limited availability of capital, which was one of the main reasons for the existence of family businesses, is no longer an issue.
However, more than ready access to capital, I believe the main force accelerating the demise of family businesses is the evolution of technology-supported management processes, which enable an entrepreneur to find, monitor and track the key human resource critical to running a business - trust.
Used to be, you only trusted your family. So, if you had capital and wanted to start a business, you'd turn to your parents, your wife, your brothers (and, in more contemporary times, sisters), for support, both in terms of skills and integrity.
Over time, you learned how to use skills from outside - you employed people. You borrowed money from banks and, with the evolution of stock markets, you raised capital from the public.
But trust was, till recently, very closely held. And this was true not only of the mom-and-pop corner shops - it's a cash business, you need a family member at the till - but also mid-sized to large companies in most industries.
Today, of course, you have systems that, in a sense, deliver trust, and you no longer need your chacha or cousin to keep an eye on things when you are away.
Thus, over the last 40 or 50 years, family businesses have been making way for modern companies, with no family ties in the boardroom or the management. Infosys is a very loud local example, but there are thousands, both in India and all over the world. (Ironically, many of these modern companies seek to create family-type values in their businesses to engender the commitment and trust that are/were hallmarks of family companies. Since people spend so much time at work these days, co-workers become "family", in a sense. More people meet their spouses at work than at any other single type of activity, and so on. So, there you have it - as family businesses decline, businesses become families.)
Over the coming decades, this process of "secularisation" of business will accelerate, there will be fewer and fewer new businesses started by siblings or parents and children, and, importantly, more and more businesses that are still controlled by close family members will split - a few amicably, but, in most cases, with a fair amount of heartburn.
But, my main point - contentious though it may be - is that these splits will be a good thing, or, rather, a great thing, both for the family members themselves and in terms of total economic value creation.
As evidence, let's come back to the Ambanis. If Dhirubhai had had only one son, and his name was Mukesh/Anil, what would have been the enterprise value of Reliance when Dhirubhai died? I believe it would have been exactly (or very close to) what it actually was.
Not that the brothers weren't adding value - both are highly committed, smart and skilled. But - and the fact of the split bears this out - I believe the family structure limited the output potential of both.
The bonanza of growth of both Reliance Industries and Reliance ADA after the demerger quite clearly confirms this. I think most people would agree that, separately, Anil and Mukesh will create much more value than they could have together.
Now, if you accept this what-appears-to-be truism, imagine the impact on global economic value of more and more family businesses in the world splitting up - remember, around 90 per cent of businesses in the world are family businesses.
And, since much of the boost to economic value will come from increased productivity - new ideas, new people (or old people in new jobs), new dreams - the additional growth will be of the best kind: low on resource use, high on person power.
As this unwinding continues steadily over the next decades, investment bankers and family wealth managers will have more and more to celebrate, as will the rest of us, since economic growth will surprise on the up-side, underpinned as it is by this as-yet unnoticed, unmeasured (and, indeed, unmeasurable) force.
