Gopi & Sri Hinduja

Flexing their financial muscles on the global stage has put the Hinduja brothers in the limelight of late. Early in 2007, they bid, unsuccessfully, to buy a stake in Hutchison Essar, India's second-largest mobile phone company, which would value the business at over £9bn. This was followed with the news that the Hindujas were weighing up the acquisition of a stake in Telecom Italia, the former Italian monopoly, after being approached by a party seeking to offload a holding.

That the brothers are now so prominent on the international stage is no accident. In June 2005, the brothers celebrated victory in the New Delhi High Court, having been acquitted of accepting kickbacks in the long-standing Bofors affair. They were alleged to have accepted bribes from the Swedish arms firm Bofors to clinch a $1.3 bn deal to sell 410 howitzers to the Indian army in 1986.

With the decks cleared, many doors that were previously closed to them are now opening. Aside from telecoms they have now gone into two new areas: insurance and real estate development. On the latter, they are now developing hundreds of acres of land in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chenriai and Mumbai. Their Hinduja Group is to revive its proposal to set up a 1 ,040-megawatt capacity, coal-based power project in India in partnership with Gulf Oil. The Hindujas have applied to increase their stake in a local bank, their vehicle operation has posted record profits and is moving into the luxury bus market and looking at export opportunities and a joint venture with China.

Investment also continues apace in other Indian-based operations while their Middle East oil business is moving into pharmaceuticals. Sri and Gopi Hinduja are the two Londonbased of four brothers (the others are in Europe and India), though they have been forced to spend much of their time recently in India defending themselves against the Bofors charges.

The brothers inherited a business empire from their late father based in the Middle East, and links with the late Shah of Iran. The listed companies in the group include Ashok Leyland, Gulf Oil, Hinduja TMT and Indusind Bank. In total, the revenues for the group are around £7bn annually. It is also reckoned to be debt free.

In the midst of the battle for Hutchison Essar, it was reported in The Times that the Hinduja family had assets of around £8bn. Certainly there is no question mark over their ability to mount a takeover for Hutchison Essar. Indeed, up until the summer of 2006, they held a 5% stake in Hutchison Essar, which they sold for £225m as at that stage Hutchison was not a seller of its stake.

Perhaps the most significant rise in their wealth has been in their widespread holdings in the property sector - both in India and across the world- where values have increased by up to 250%. Their industrial holdings in Ashok Leyland, Gulf Oil, HTMT and Ennore Foundries have also increased in value by some 60%.

The Hinduja family also showed its financial clout in the summer of 2006, when it acquired one of London's most expensive and sought-after properties, previously owned by the queen. The brothers paid £5 8m for a 100 year lease on the 60-room property at Carlton House Terrace on the Mall, and plan to spend another £40m to £50m converting it for use by their joint families. We are slightly more cautious in our valuation and settle for a current valuation of £6.2bn for the Hinduja family.