He iswidely known as the king of good times. UB Group Chairman Vijay Mallya, whoinherited an empire of diverse businesses at age 27, is now trying hard to showthat he can be a pragmatic king of bad times, too.

That explains Mallya's move to hawk a part of his family silver at a time whenthe combined debt of his six listed companies has touched a whopping Rs 14,231crore, as on December 2008. The debt is now more than the group's market cap,which has slumped 78.39 per cent to Rs 9,527.74 crore as on March 3, 2009, froma peak of Rs 44,091.37 crore on January 8 last year.

The bulk of this money went into the acquisition of Shaw Wallace in June 2005for Rs 1,500 crore and Scotch whisky firm Whyte & Mackay (W&M) in May2007 for Rs 4,800 crore. Although critics say the "king" ignored thedanger signals, his backers say the acquisitions were made in the long-terminterests of the group.

Mallya has also been in talks with Diageo, the world's largest liquormaker, and a couple of other companies to sell over 15 per cent of UnitedSpirits. The sale is expected to reduce debt and interest costs by Rs 1,200crore to Rs 1,500 crore, provided the companies can deal with the anti-trustangle and what Mallya says are other "complicated" issues.