For a bank that operates in 150 countries and traces its roots to an institution founded by an immigrant to lend to other immigrants, Bank of America has been pretty provincial in its selection of board members. Only now is BofA getting around to naming its first foreign director.
But the choice should do a lot to make up for the oversight: Mukesh Ambani, 53, the chairman, managing director and significant owner of India’s biggest private sector company, Reliance Industries, an energy and materials conglomerate with a $75 billion market cap. (Mukesh’s brother, Anil, wound up with the telecom, financial services and entertainment side of the family business after their father, Dhirubhai, died in 2002.)
Mukesh Ambani, a Stanford B-school dropout, may be able to give BofA some personal advice on a subject where it could use a tutorial: mortgage financing. You see, he owns the world’s most expensive house, the 27-story “Antilia” in Mumbai, which cost about $1 billion.
