Bajaj To Hold Talks With Allianz

Six years ago Rahul Bajaj along with his four cousins decided to take a plunge into insurance by joining hands with European insurance major Allianz. A good business decision then, but now Rahul Bajaj is being haunted by his decision to allow Allianz to use the call option to hike stake in the life insurance joint venture to 74 per cent something which the markets have already punished his stock for and there is still no scope of a renegotiations.They didn''t agree, I am meeting them next month in Europe. In hindsight I feel we should not have agreed to let them hike stake in the life insurance business to 74 per cent. We should have instead given them the option to hike stake to 50 per cent in both the life and general insurance business, said Rahul Bajaj, Chairman, Bajaj Auto. So round one of persuasion has failed and Bajaj on his part is regretting for letting the foreign partner to hike stake in such a cheap way.