Gelli scores

Chairman Ramesh Gelli’s indiscriminate loans to Ketan Parekh and his bunch of crony industrialists were large and reckless enough to destroy Global Trust Bank (GTB) during the scam of 2000. A shotgun marriage with Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), arranged by the regulator, salvaged depositors’ money. Last week we learnt how Ramesh Gelli’s bold but risky bet on Bangalore-based Avesthagen fetched handsome to OBC. Several years ago, Gelli gave a Rs2 crore loan to Villoo Morawala-Patell without any collateral to get her started. Later, when she got venture funding, the loan was converted into equity. Recently, Morawala-Patell bought back the shares in the still unlisted Avesthagen at a hefty Rs 475, netting Rs 14 crore for OBC.