Reliance runs out of pulling power

The Mumbai Marathon is an unmissable part of the Mumbai social calender. You don't need to participate, but it's well worth watching from the sidelines. Nothing else gets the city's mega-wealthy onto to the streets en masse — perhaps because it's the only day the streets are cleared of "the other India" of honking traffic, beggars and bullock-carts.

The undisputed king of the Mumbai marathon runners is Anil Ambani, the lesser of India's billionaire Ambani brothers in age, wealth...and waist size. Out here industrialists are like rock stars, so when Anil runs, he dominates headlines.

And never more so than last year, when, days before, he pulled off the most spectacular fundraising in Indian corporate history.

His Reliance Power IPO received $200 billion of applications for shares worth just $2.9 billion.

He was on a publicity high. There was even talk of his supplanting estranged brother Mukesh as India's richest man. But this year Ambani kept a very low profile.

I couldn't spot him (though I missed the first runners across the line). The newspapers barely mentioned him. Is this because the day after last year's marathon, India's stock markets went into complete seizure and collapsed? The IPO turned out to be the last spurt of an exhausted market, and those who bought into it now have just a third of their investment left. Perhaps Ambani was running in fancy dress.

* A few international executives may still prefer to stay away from the Trident-Oberoi hotel, but former Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin, who has just missed heading Yahoo, is not one of them. In November he abruptly ditched plans to receive the Global Indian of the Year award there (at that point terrorists were still in residence). But on Saturday he was back in the ballroom to pick it up.

* After his speech at the Taj Mahal Hotel last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told journalists present to keep quiet and let "real people" — a blend of diplomats, and Indian and British businessmen — ask the questions. Alan Rosling, Tata's international director, said this showed a "healthy disregard" for the press. But ensuing media coverage of Miliband's "diplomatic disaster" of a trip suggests it may not have been entirely wise.