Anil Ambani’s other Amitabh

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: Amitabh Jhunjhunwala, 49, the newly appointed vice-chairman of Reliance Capital Ltd (RCL), is as well-known for his hard work as his transparent equation with his boss, Anil Ambani. Says a former colleague: “The elevation is a confirmation of what has been the reality for long: that Amitabh Jhunjhunwala is the second most important man in the Anil Ambani group. He serves as the eyes and ears of Anil Ambani and is also his closest confidant.”

But his elevation does not rest on his friendship with the head of the newly carved out Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) alone. It comes close on the heels of Reliance Mutual Fund garnering the highest ever collections - of Rs 5,700 crore—in a single scheme recently.

Theirs is a friendship that has endured the biggest corporate battles in recent memory, which eventually saw Dhirubhai Ambani’s Reliance empire being split between brothers Mukesh and Anil. So much so, that when the bitter tug-of-war between the brothers Ambani broke out, Jhunjhunwala, then treasurer of flagship Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) of which Mukesh is chairman, resigned and became a spokesperson for Anil Ambani.

Today, with the RIL demerger complete and two empires carved out of the erstwhile RIL, Jhunjhunwala heads Anil’s think-tank and is his chief strategist.

As chief of Reliance’s asset management business in the mid-nineties, Jhunjhunwala put in place the foundation on which Reliance Mutual Fund has been built.

Son of a former member CBDT, Jhunjhunwala, a chartered accountant by training, ran a financial magazine before his entry into the Reliance fold in the early nineties.

This soft-spoken confidante of the management is often entrusted with interfacing with both the media and global rating agencies, even as he refers to himself as a back-room person. But the very same negotiating skills have helped Jhunjhunwala put through some key deals for both Reliance and the new ADAG.

He has been associated with the Reliance bond issues, the sale of Reliance’s stake in Larsen & Toubro to the Aditya Birla Group, and, more recently, the acquisitions by ADAG of entertainment conglomerate Adlabs and insurance firm AMP Sanmar. In all of these, while Anil was the architect, it was Jhunjhunwala who was widely believed to be at the forefront of the negotiations.