UNEASY WAIT

ZEE'S PROMOTERS ARE NOT HAVING IT EASY WITH SEBI AS AN INTERIM ORDER PLAYS SPOILSPORT. THIS COULD PUT ITS IMPENDING MERGER WITH SONY PICTURES NETWORK INDIA AT RISK. WHAT LIES AHEAD?

- KRISHNA GOPALAN

GARBLED RECEPTION

The interim order from Sebi charges Subhash Chandra and his son Punit Goenka with misusing their board positions at Zee Entertainment Enterprises

Money is said to have moved from Zee to private entities owned by Chandra and Goenka

Zee and Sony Pictures Network India are in the middle of a merger to create a media behemoth

Sony has said the Sebi interim order has been taken very seriously and it will monitor developments affecting the deal

In the proposed merger, Zee's promoters will hold just 4 percent

FOR SUBHASH CHANDRA, 72, facing challenges is a way of life. From staving off a takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch in the late 1990s to setting up the ill-fated rebel cricket league ICL, the home-grown entrepreneur who made his name as the Founder of Zee TV-may well have lost count of how many he has faced. And he has emerged unscathed in most instances, though he has lost a big chunk of his shareholding in Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (or ZEEL, that had revenues of 8,170 crore for FY23) and is the crown jewel of his Essel Group.

The present challenge is quite a different story, though. He is dealing with a host of serious allegations from capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) around corporate governance. This will test Chandra's mettle and that of his son Punit Goenka and he will have to draw upon his wisdom from many a battle to deal with it. For the man who got into television broadcasting without a background in the business and carved out an empire-competition has come from several quarters and it did make a dent, but Chandra managed to hang on. The ability to think out of the box stood him in good stead earlier. Will that help him this time?