ET Business Leader of the Year Award for Anil Agarwal

Economic Times honors Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Group with the Business Leader of the Year Award for 2012. According to ET, the award seeks to honour a leader who has clearly demonstrated a strategic direction for success, and pursued a vision.

It is growth in trying times that tilted the balance in Agarwal's favour when the jury selected him as the Business Leader of the Year. They applauded Agarwal's effort to clinch the $8.7-billion acquisition of oil & gas company Cairn India in December 2011; the transaction got delayed by more than a year after the announcement due to a disagreement over royalty payments.

The 58-year-old chairman of the $11.4-billion, London-headquartered Vedanta Resources aims to create a diversified natural resources conglomerate, with presence in metals, oil and gas, power and mining.

In end-June, Agarwal crossed a crucial barrier in his quest to assemble all his Indian assets under one roof. The approval of shareholders of Sesa Goa and Sterlite Industries to merge the two companies paves the way for Agarwal to make Sesa Sterlite the main operating company.

"In the natural resource space, our country offers so much potential and opportunity," said Agarwal, a day after the jury declared him Business Leader of the Year. "Cairn is a world class asset with the potential to play a very important role in the country's energy security."

Agarwal expanded mostly in India — although he has bought assets overseas also — with the money raised in global markets. He has raised $12.5 billion overseas capital for investment in India over the past seven years.

His acquisition spree started in 1976 with a jelly-filled cable company, which he later renamed Sterlite Industries. After setting up a copper plant and a copper smelter through Sterlite, Agarwal bought a series of companies in India and abroad. With state-run undertakings like Hindustan Zinc and Balco and private companies like Malco, Sesa Goa and Cairn, Agarwal has proved his mettle at building an empire by buying assets.

Beyond Indian shores, Agarwal set up copper operations in Australia and Zambia, zinc in Namibia, Ireland and South Africa, and iron ore in Liberia. Net result: he is the world's largest integrated producer of zinc and lead, and amongst the biggest in copper, iron ore and silver. However, his acquisition story is not unblemished. He made two abortive bids — first to acquire Kolkata-based Indian Aluminium, which eventually went to the Aditya Birla group; the other, an attempt to buy US copper miner Asarco, which its estranged parent Grupo Mexico took over.

The proposed merger of Sesa Goa and Sterlite Industries, which is expected to receive all regulatory nods by December, is not just of two companies; it collapses all the assets of Vedanta's listed and unlisted companies in India — Sesa Goa, Sterlite, Vedanta Aluminium, Malco, Balco and Hindustan Zinc — into Sesa Sterlite. The new company will also own the group's majority stake in Cairn India.

Agarwal has his hands full battling criticism from another quarter: environmentalists, ranging from activists in Maharashtra, who forced him to relocate to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu for a copper smelter, to tribals in Odisha, who delayed his plans for an alumina refinery. "Only resources can help eradicate poverty," Agarwal had said when quizzed about environmental risks. "We (India) have to use our resources in a sustainable manner for our development."