The post-wedding cleanup: Repenting the failed merger
I n 2011, Vayalar Ravi, then Civil Aviation Minister set up a Parliamentary committee to analyze the failure of the merger. The committee was chaired by a retired Supreme Court Justice D.M Dharmadhikari. The committee thoroughly examined the integration, structure of employees, working conditions, and various schemes and also made several recommendations relating to the same. T he merger didn’t help the losses that each of the entities had incurred. The merged entity totaled a loss of Rs 2,226 crore in 2007-08 with a turnover of Rs 13,638 crores. In the following financial year, NACIL reported a loss of Rs 5,548. W hen the losses were alarming, SBI caps was appointed to hatch out a road map for the merged entity. SBI prepared a short-, medium- and long-term growth plan for Air India. As per SBI’s reports, the carrier needed at least two years from 2009 to merely break even given the revenue. The annual average revenue was about Rs 16,000 crores. Amongst its several other de...