Why the lawyers stepped on the gas

Events in India can have a disturbing inevitability. There was never much doubt that the legal tangles around Mukesh Ambani's giant Indian gas discovery would magically dissolve once all the pipes, valves and pumps were in place to begin production. Sure enough, the Bombay High Court has now ended a 20-month ban on Ambani's Reliance Industries signing new gas sales agreements.

This gives Mukesh at least a month to tie up deals at the government-approved price before the gas starts to flow. On the face of it, Mukesh's case looked pretty weak.

Back in 2002, Reliance won a competitive bid to supply two power plants of state power provider NTPC by quoting a ridiculously low price — equivalent to just over $13 a barrel. Then, when he and his estranged brother Anil split the business in 2005, they agreed that Anil's companies would be entitled to buy most of the rest of the gas at the NTPC price.

The reasons found by Mukesh's lawyers for wriggling out of both agreements were far from compelling. But that hardly matters: Mukesh is India's richest man; the petroleum minister is a friend; and the impact of the gas on both India's economy and the government's coffers is too enormous to allow delay.

In the week before the court's announcement, Reliance shares climbed 15%. Even before the judges made their statement, the market knew which way it would go.

* The Satyam scandal is still lowering the shame threshold for corporate governance here. "It's disgusting," one member of the Bombay elite told me, talking about the way playboy Vijay Mallya used company cash to buy his superyacht Indian Empress. Back then, in 2006, Mallya was lauded for bringing a bit of glamour to business. Post-Satyam, it seems, getting shareholders to buy your toys is no longer OK.

* Mumbai's investment bankers are still working the kind of hours that would bring a nostalgic mist to the eyes of London counterparts. "It's ridiculous. I mean, Where's my downturn?'," complained one I met on Saturday night after he had detailed a punishing week of two, three, and even five o'clock in the morning finishes.