For several months now, we have been somewhat gripped by the feud between the Ambani brothers. Since the core of the recent feud has been related to gas, which belongs to the nation as a whole, much of the debate has been centered on the question: Is the war between the brothers hurting the nation? Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others, issued a plea to the brothers to settle so that the nation doesn’t suffer. Last week, two of my colleagues engaged in a bitter, and might I say uncharacteristic, debate over whether or not the sibling rivalry was harming the nation.

I don’t wish to enter that debate. A previous posting already reflects my view. But the thought that recently struck me is this: Is the billionaire brothers’ bitter fight hurting their own companies? Did it, or does it still, affect their ability to cope with a sharp economic downturn and rapidly changed market conditions?

Older brother Mukesh’s Reliance Industries (RIL) is going through one of his toughest periods post-Dhirubhai Ambani. Global demand for oil has sharply dipped since the last year’s global recession, the worst since the Great Depression. Its gross refining margins, once the highest in the world, has halved. Nobody expects oil demand, or its price, to vault to the dizzying heights seen in early 2008. This poses a big question mark over RIL’s business over the medium term.

RIL’s retail business was projected to be its growth engine since Mukesh gave up the telecom business to Anil. But it has been hard hit by the slowdown. Nimble competitors are eroding its early mover advantage, not to mention the quiet entry of Wal Mart in a limited way. On top of all this, as RIL stock has languished, its “aggressive” accounting practices have come under scrutiny. Recently, Kotak Mahindra sought a number of answers to their accounting policies, evidently suggesting that RIL was capitalizing a lot of the expenses in order for its earnings to look better than what they actually were.

Brother Anil hasn’t been doing that well, either. His flagship business is Reliance Communications, the telecom powerhouse which also has been hit by accounting scandals. It is alleged that RCom, as it is known by its stock symbol, inflated revenues when reporting to the stock exchanges, and suppressed them when reporting to the telecom regulators with whom it shares revenue. Then there is the question of the fundamentals of its business. The cellular industry is in the throes of a bruising tariff war, much of it initiated by RCom itself when it ventured into the GSM space. The fate of Anil’s Reliance Power, one of the high-flying IPOs two years ago, hangs in balance, not least because of the gas dispute.

I am not going to debate this but am going to sign off with the following question: Would the Reliance groups of companies have been better off if the brothers had been more focused on their business, rather than on their rivalry?

P.S.: By the way, I don’t own the stock of any Ambani company and that is not just a disclosure but also a reason for cheer.