How a giant collapsed

The story starts 30 years ago, when former Citibanker, Ravi Parthasarathy , IL&FS' chief, set up the company to beef up India's infrastructure-building capabilities.

When an AAA-rated company with shareholders such as Life Insurance Corporation of India, State Bank of India, Orix Corporation and Housing Development Finance Corporation, regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, with an outstanding debt of Rs 91,000 crore falls, it is bound to cause ripples. The fall of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) did exactly that. It shook investors’ confidence in the non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and led to more defaults and an eventual downgrading of the sector.

In Never Too Big to Fail Sandeep Hasurkar, a former investment banker, who managed energy projects for IL&FS for a few