Welcome to Planet Oswal

Illustration: Rod Clement.

As politics becomes more unpredictable, there is comfort in the stolid certainties of the business world — such as the inarguable fact that Pankaj Oswal is a special breed of weird.

Next week the billionaire-to-bankrupt Pankaj and his “wifey” Radhika’s $2.5 billion claim against fellow vegetarian Shayne Elliott’s ANZ returns to the Supreme Court in Melbourne after a fortnight’s recess.

Expect a thorough airing of the almost Michael Jackson-scale weirdness of Planet Oswal, as ANZ ramps up its defence.

Where to start? Perhaps the fact that Pankaj is currently involved in a separate bitter dispute back in India with his mother, Aruna Oswal.

The trouble stems from Pankaj’s late father, Abhey Oswal, who died in March while on a business trip in Moscow. The billionaire tycoon was 67.

No will was left behind.

After the tycoon’s death, his widow Aruna took charge of the assorted family businesses — to the extreme displeasure of her oldest son.

Pankaj was allegedly so furious that he stormed the family’s office — with his wife and associates — and smuggled out bank statements, records of board meetings and memorandums of association.

The break-in was registered in Barakhamba Road Police Station, although Pankaj denies it ever occurred. He claims CCTV footage will clear him.

Pankaj told the press that “all kinds of Indian system pressure tactics” were being used to intimidate him. It is a phrase redolent of ANZ’s former head of risk Chris Page, who is alleged to have used a headlock against Pankaj as a negotiating tactic.

The turban defence

Meanwhile, his mother’s team say that Pankaj’s late father fell out with him because of the ­Burrup Fertilisers troubles in Australia, which are being spectacularly ventilated in the Supreme Court in Melbourne.

Pankaj denies this, as well.

And while he concedes there was no commitment in writing from his father to pass on the family fortune, Pankaj has another avenue: the turban defence.

Pankaj argues the Oswal fortune is his because he performed a traditional northern Indian ceremony at his father’s funeral while wearing a special turban.

“Had it been any hint of differences, leave alone disowning had existed, my pagri rasam (the ceremony) would not have been done in front of 1200 members of family and community,” he told the Indian publication Business Standard in April.

We understand the turban defence is unlikely to be deployed in the Australian courts.

Yes, there’s a family backstory worthy of Bollywood behind the Oswals’ ambitious $2.5bn claim against ANZ.

If it ever makes the screen, perhaps Pankaj’s brother Shael Oswal could star in it. As it happens, he’s a Bollywood singer.

And if funding for the film is proving difficult, perhaps Pankaj’s sister Shallu could kick in. As it happens, she is married to Indian billionaire Naveen Jindal. What a family.

The business of ABC

More than six months after it was commissioned by ABC chairman Jim Spigelman ​and his distinguished board, the editorial review into Aunty’s business coverage is about to be released.

The review is expected to be presented to the ABC board — which includes winemaker Simon “Don” Mordant, former Seven Group CFO Peter Lewis and The Drum-quashing managing director Michelle Guthrie — when they meet in a fortnight in Melbourne.

Former ANZ CEO Mike Smith. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian.

That, of course, is the home town of the review’s high-profile contributing author, former ANZ chief executive Mike Smith, who is now on the books as a consultant to the bank — with a Collins Street office to prove it.

Smith has been helping out broadcast consultant Kerry Blackburn on the review.

Enlisting the straight-talking Smith has gone from being a coup for the ABC to being slightly awkward.

Since he was appointed, ANZ has become the centre of racy claims about strip clubs, cocaine-laced birthday cakes and pervy Bloomberg chats about Home and Away starlets.

Still, it should help the review get some attention when it is released.

Pies and hot dogs

The lunch crowd at Neil Perry’s Rockpool Bar and Grill yesterday was almost as dormant as M&A activity right now. A rare deal that is expected to go through the politically frazzled market is the $230 million takeover of Patties Foods by Tim Sims’ private equity firm Pacific Equity Partners. Shareholders are expected to approve it late next month.

Bulldogs supporters were in the lunch crowd at Rockpool Bar and Grill yesterday. Picture: Mark Nolan/Getty Images.

Fitting, then, that Mark Smith, chair of Four’N Twenty maker Patties, was in the lunch crowd with his advisers from investment bank Greenhill, Chris Smith (no relation) and Bulldogs tragic Roger Feletto.

Speaking of the Bulldogs, Canterbury-Bankstown chair George Peponis was also in the house, fuelling up before his team was to clash with Marina Go’s Wests Tigers at ANZ Stadium last night.

Billionaires on boats

No wonder the nation’s best lunch spots are a bit vacant. So many of their regular clientele have fled for the European summer.

Just follow the boats.

There are the superyachts of billionaire besties Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox, which— like Cleopatra and Marc Antony —are being irresistibly drawn towards a Mediterranean embrace.

Billionaire besties Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox.

Solly’s 54m super yacht Maridome was yesterday spotted just off Genoa, only 150-odd kilometres from Lindsay’s 49m Volpini, last seen off Pisa.

Our best guess is that the bromance should flare somewhere near Portofino — before they relocate for Lindsay’s imminent “conception party”.

Meanwhile, a deckhand in Naples yesterday told us they saw fellow billionaire James Packer’s 88m Arctic P motoring in a Corsican direction, while a Scandinavian cod fisherman swore he saw property billionaire Frank Lowy’s 74m Ilona just off the frigid west coast of Norway.

And in between them all is The World, on which Queen of the Billionaires, Gina Rinehart, has a private residence.

The private cruise ship was yesterday nearing the White Cliffs of Dover, after a week docked in London — which allowed residents time to visit Wimbledon’s grass courts or to slip off to lunch with a High Commissioner, as Gina did with Alexander Downer.