Ambani brothers may meet head on in the Insurance market.

The strife between the Ambani brothers may take another interesting turn with The Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) latest announcement. The commission has given a go-ahead to the 74% acquisition bid by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industry Limited (RIL) from each of Bharti AXA Life Insurance and Bharti AXA General Insurance. However before the actual action begins, the acquisition is awaiting some more approvals including the implementation of the newly proposed IRDA guideline on equity stake selling (find out more about this IRDA guideline here

For the financial year 2011, Anil Ambani's life insurance venture showed a first year premium of Rs 3,000 crore while Bharti Axa could collect only Rs 360 crore. In the general insurance, Bharti Axa recorded Rs 550 crores as against Rs 1655 crores from Reliance. While Bharti Axa life Insurance ranks 20th amongst 23 life insurance companies and Bharti Axa General Insurance ranks 15th amongst 19 general insurance companies, Anil Ambani has managed to find a place in the top 5.

So is Mukesh Ambani worried? A man with such a brilliant smile would never be.

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Reliance Life Insurance's deal with Nippon Life may get delayed

Nippon Life, which announced a deal to pick up 26% stake in Reliance Life Insurance just around the time the Tsunami struck Japan might have to wait a bit longer before the deal goes through. As per local rules in India, a company needs to be in existence for 10 years before it can divest any stake. Reliance Life completes 10 years in January 2012, and if the deal is to be completed before that, it will need special approval from the regulator IRDA. Reliance Life came into existence by buying the erstwhile AMP Sanmar.

Nippon Life is to pay Rs 3062 crores for a 26% stake, valuing the company at around 12250 crores.

In our humble opinion, the valuation seems way too inflated given the scale of operations of Reliance Life. But then, the Japanese are well known for overpaying!