 "Mallya's self-inflicted bad times")
Vijay Mallya is a king, no doubt -- a king who squandered away more gold than he earned. From the inheritor of a business empire to a spoilt prince who owned a T-20 team, a Formula 1 racing team and a custom-made Boeing 747, Mallya made the mould for a glamorous and fun-loving tycoon.
But behind the scenes, Mallya made many mistakes. It's these miscaluculated business risks that have brought in the bad times. Here is a list of things proving to be thorns in Mallya's crown.
An inheritence of acquisitions
Vijay Mallya inherited the passion for acquisitions from his father, Vittal Mallya, who started buying shares of United Breweries when he was in college and was made the company's chairman when he was just 22 years of age. Vijay Mallya carried forward his father's acquisition spree and acquired Berger Paints, which he sold off later at a profit of $66 million; Best and Crompton, an engineering firm; and Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers.
Mallya's big acquisition came in 2007 when, two years after he entered aviation with Kingfisher Airlines, he bit into Air Deccan for nearly Rs 1,000 crore.
And his major coup in liquor industry came when he bought Whyte & Mackay, the world’s fourth largest producer of premium Scotch, in 2007, for a steep £595 million.
Making a meal of deals
Kingfisher Aitlines had always been a pet project for the King of Good Times. He managed most parts of the business himself, from selecting air hostesses to recording welcome messagees for all passengers. Air Deccan became a loss-making low-cost carrier run on a thin budget, the first rotten apple. Mallya's acquisition was motivated by Deccan's international air routes. Instead of consolidating his domestic airspace, which was driven by a market seeking efficient, value-for-money transportation option and utility, Mallya characteristically played the flamboyant flyer, with gourmet lunches, personal video screens and gift hampers.
In the same year that he bought Air Deccan, Mallya also placed one of the largest ever orders of Airbus aircraft: 50, including A320, A330, A350 and A380 aircraft. As a result, by October 2012, Kingfisher had tote up Rs 16,000 crore of accumulated losses. The airline owes more than Rs 7,500 crore ($1.2 billion) to lenders.
The other major arm of the Mallya empire was liquor, of course, and that too developed a rot. He was forced to sell White and Mackay in 2014 to Philippines-based brandy producer Emperador for £430 million, at a loss.
His battle for control over Shaw Wallace in mid-1980s, with Manu Chhabria, ended in an inflated deal of Rs 1,251 crore, made possible in 2002 after Chhabria's death.
While Force India and Royal Challengers Bangalore proved more profitable, extravagant after parties and the mammoth price tags for players in the auctions, hurt as much.
Decadent luxury
The Kigfisher fiasco has been blamed as the source of all his misery, but it is Mallya's love luxuries which have constantly eaten away his health. He spent $1.8 million to buy Mahatma Gandhi’s belongings in an auction in New York in 2008 just as he had five years earlier, in 2003, bought the sword Tipu Sultan, for Rs 1.5 crore ($237,797 now).
Beside the Formula 1 and IPL teams, UB Group also entered into a joint venture with Mohun Bagan while picking up a stake in East Bengal in 1998.
His lavish lifestyles, inculding the customised Boeing 747, has kept Mallya in and out of financial misery even before the Kingfisher problem started. Business Today asked in 1992 - “Is Vijay Mallya broke?”
