If there is one story that encapsulates how the perception of India has changed in recent months, it is that of the country's richest brothers.

Relations between Mukesh and Anil Ambani - estranged siblings whose companies combined account for 5 per cent of India's GDP - recently sank to a new low.

Anil wanted to combine Reliance Communications (RCom), his mobile phone company, with MTN, Africa's largest.

The deal, which would have created a colossus spanning the most attractive emerging mobile markets, fell apart when Mukesh, who heads Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector company, claimed that he had the right of first refusal to buy RCom.

Faced with potentially messy legal proceedings (the Indian courts are not noted for their swiftness), MTN got the jitters and walked away.

Rows between the Ambani brothers are nothing new - they share the same magnificent apartment block in Bombay, but use separate lifts to avoid running into one another - but the spat may have damaged India's reputation as a place to do business.

“What's the message? That you have to ask Mukesh's permission before you do a deal?” one senior Bombay banker asked. “It's not a very grown-up way to go about things, is it?”

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