Gautam Adani played it smart. The founder of the Adani group had initially put in the lowest bid for Ambuja Cements Ltd and its subsidiary, ACC Ltd, but walked away with the deal right under the noses of fellow billionaires Kumar Mangalam Birla and Sajjan Jindal. 

Birla, keen to buy the two marquee cement brands to keep his UltraTech Cement’s leadership status in the Indian market unchallenged, had placed an offer in the region of Rs 430 a share for Ambuja Cements, says an executive with direct knowledge of the transaction. That would have valued Holcim’s 63.11% stake in Ambuja Cements at about Rs 53,000 crore, or $6.7 billion. That was markedly higher than even the revised bid of Rs 385 a share that Adani put on the table, valuing Holcim’s shareholding at about Rs 48,000 crore, or $6.1 billion. 

Jindal, whose JSW Cement would have leapfrogged from the middle of the pack to number two in the market with the deal, promised to put in a bid of $7 billion, of which