Highly leveraged Indian tycoons are having a tough time. Gautam Adani’s $236 billion infrastructure empire has shrunk by greater than three-fifths in a month. But whereas his relentless rise and spectacular fall hog headlines, a smaller storm could also be brewing for one more well-known magnate. Anil Agarwal’s once-London-listed Vedanta Resources Ltd. has a pile of debt, together with a $1 billion bond due January. Yet, his most up-to-date try to trim the load has upset the one accomplice he can’t afford to bother: New Delhi. 

Around this time final 12 months, when the US Federal Reserve was nonetheless to begin raising interest rates to tame inflation and Russia’s battle in Ukraine had began to ship commodities surging to their best quarter in more than three decades, Agarwal was toying with the concept of merging debt-laden Vedanta Resources with its cash-rich, Mumbai-listed unit, Vedanta Ltd. That plan, which was reported by Bloomberg News, didn’t go wherever.