Meet Ravi Parthasarathy, the man who built the house of cards called IL&FS

In February 2017, the Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) told us it had formed a joint investment platform with the US-based private equity fund, Lone Star, for stressed infrastructure projects in the country. Ravi Parthasarathy, its then chairman, had spotted an opportunity in the dud-loan business and said at the toss: “The India infrastructure sector is poised for a revival as the evolving framework is becoming more conducive for resolving stressed assets.”
 
A year-and-a-half on, it’s IL&FS that has been tossed out and is in the distress-sale basement.
 
By all accounts, nothing about Parthasarathy can be said ever added up. For all the glare that’s on now — both regulatory and in the media — around him and the house of cards he built, there is very little you know about the man himself.
 
Ravi Parthasarathy became the CEO of IL&FS when it was set up in 1989, was promoted to chairman in 2006, and retired in July this year. An alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, the former Citibanker who was also the co-founder of 20th Century Finance had built up a profile as a dealmaker when IL&FS gobbled up Maytas Infrastructure in 2009 or when it hawked IL&FS Investmart (the broking subsidiary) for $260 million in 2008 to HSBC. And the many roads, transport and power projects he structured, but beyond what was on the surface you knew little; it was all very much like IL&FS itself, built as it was in his mirror image.
 
Almost the entire senior team at IL&FS has stood together for decades even when the infrastructure sector and jobs in it were up for grabs; nobody ever went over to rival, IDFC. “Ask any head-hunter — you never found the resume of a senior IL&FS management team member out there,” a senior finance industry financial professional said.
 
“It was mind control,” said another. “Ravi used both the material and the emotional to build loyalty. He rightfully thought of himself as being smarter and intelligent than others around him, but cut you slack if you didn’t perform and took care of everybody materially. On the emotional side, he spoke about everyone being part of the family of which he was the karta (patriarch). He holidayed both abroad and India with the families of his senior team.”
Within IL&FS, he was known to be “open with his senior-most associates” but was feared at one-drop level and below. “In my early days at the company, I used to almost hide myself when I passed him by in the corridor. But once I was introduced to him, it was fine,” says an employee, adding, “I got the feeling he liked to have pin-drop silence in office.” That Parthasarathy helmed IL&FS silently is now evident by the deafening noise it has created in the wake of its defaults to all and sundry.

 
Old hands in the financial services world describe him variously as being “sharp”, “well read”, being “fond of the finer things in life”, and “very meticulous and finicky about time”. Some recall Parthasarathy as being a “pipe-smoker” or “chain smoker”.
 
Come to think of it, there is hardly anything by of way of an interview of Parthasarathy, be it in print or television. Nor do you have pictures of him at awards functions or in the panel discussion-cum-seminar-tourism circuit even as a few who knew him well say that “he was both sociable and liked to network”.
 
It is hard to name anyone who has built up a sizeable business about whom you don’t get to read, hear and watch enough of the person’s early life, career, hobbies, what-have-you.
 
“He kept away from the media other than making statements via a press release when needed. He let you know as much you he wanted you to know which was not very much,” says one who had worked alongside Parthasarathy.
 
“You must give it to him that he managed all five levels of governance — the board, stakeholders, the regulators, the rating agencies and the lenders. Look closely, he had surrounded himself with all the big names. So, nobody had the guts to stand up and say, “Look, here is a problem. Why don’t we people look at it? That sort of thing never happened,” says an IL&FS insider. 
 
Both the man and his mirror image now stand cracked.