The negotiator

BACKSTAGE

His name surfaced recently as an arbitrator for L&T and Kumar Birla in finding a peaceful settlement of cross-holdings between the engineering giant and Grasim Industries. Gurumurthy says this is a figment of the media's imagination. He however concedes that he did have a role to play in ensuring the Aditya Birla Group got control of L&T's cement capacity a few years back. The motivation for that involvement was to ensure that large cement capacities in India did not land in "foreign hands".

Close associates who have known Gurumurthy for decades believe that he is now back in circulation after a bit of a lull in the last four years.

"There was some mud slinging between the Sangh Parivar and the BJP after the defeat in the previous elections. Guru played a decisive role in dosing some heartburn and containing the situation that was getting out of hand," says a close associate of Gurumurthy.

Gurumurthy himself is not too surprised about large corporate houses who can afford the most expensive legal brains in the country seeking a humble chartered accountant in Chennai to redress their family and business issues. He says that his greatest strength is that he is not a pure professional. "I have never billed (for arbitration services)," he says.

His new office in Chennai, spread over 3,500 sq ft, houses the raging practice of his firm, Guru & Ram. His colleagues say that he stopped