Fifty Indian companies have split themselves up in three years. Vedanta has missed its own completion deadline three times. And when Religare announced theirs, the share price fell ten per cent — on the announcement, not on results.

So what's changed?

This episode asks why the market has started pricing execution risk at the moment a split is announced rather than waiting to see. Why splitting a company just got procedurally cheaper, and what a shorter approval route does to your build window. And then the part that decides whether any of it works: what a demerger actually does to the debt, the cash, the exposures and the flows.

Including the questions that are far cheaper to answer before the perimeter is fixed than after it. Whether removing a business from the group trips a covenant on facilities that have nothing to do with it. Whether the smaller entity can fund itself on day one. What happens to hedge accounting when a group stops hedging centrally. And why the cash pool has to be rebuilt twice, not once.

Personal views. Not investment advice.

SOURCES

• LSEG data via Business Standard — 50 demergers in three years; 2025 a ten-year high at 29 deals and over $40bn; 2026 to date five deals worth $764m
• Business Standard — FY27 demerger pipeline: Vedanta, Apollo Hospitals, Natco Pharma, Religare
• Vedanta — completion date extended to 30 June 2026, third postponement, clearances pending
• MCA — Companies (Compromises, Arrangements and Amalgamations) Rules amended September 2024 and September 2025; Rule 25(9) recognises fast-track demergers; ~10,000 cases pending before the NCLT
• Academic research — 163 BSE spin-off announcements 2000–2023, positive cumulative abnormal returns; operating performance improvements not consistently observed post-restructuring
• Separation advisory material — covenant default risk on removal of assets, IFRS 9 hedge re-designation, "wrong pockets" risk on guarantees and charges

Figures are as reported. Check against the underlying filing before relying on them.