An Accountant Writes
Vol 1, Issue 2 | February 2026
CA Nithya Aravindakshan
From the Editor's Desk
This newsletter reaches you as Budget 2026 is being analysed and dissected. A special Budget 2026 newsletter will reach your inbox by next week with detailed analysis and impacts. This edition’s focus is on corporate restructuring. Chinese smartphone brands in India are restructuring to better mitigate regulatory risks, SC Ruling on Tiger Global (Flipkart) – tax havens facing challenges, Leveraged Buyouts - how investors value business using debt as a leverage.
In this issue, we have covered:
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Regulatory storm in smartphone industry - BBK Splits, Xiaomi consolidates;
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Tax havens lose advantage - SC Ruling on Tiger Global;
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Building LBO models.
I’m sharing an LBO model I built for an AI finance project. It was critiqued as 'too academic', making it a perfect case study for the gap between textbook theory and PE reality. I guess I was too optimistic about operational perfection!! I think it’s a good resource for anyone wanting to see the “bones” of an LBO without the clutter of a 50-tab institutional model.
I ran the data on Claude (free version) to cross-check my answers. While Claude is impressive, it still needs fine-tuning as it didn’t consider interest payments for Free Cash Flows. Nevertheless, AI models processing and generating reports real time - I had a glimpse into the future of investment banking.
Food for Thought
I recently attended a two-day workshop at ICAI, Bangalore. The AI session faculty made us do an insightful experiment. If you, like me, use AI extensively, then I would recommend that you feed these two prompts to ChatGPT or any other AI platform and check if it matches your views.
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Based on our past interactions, tell me what you have observed about me that I might not realise myself. Be completely honest. I want a clear and direct reflection.
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Based on everything we have discussed, act as my professional mentor and give me brutally honest feedback about: My professional weaknesses, ethical shortcomings, areas where I seem uncertain or lack competence, patterns in how I handle difficult situations. Be direct, not robotic.
What do you observe? Do you agree? I would strongly recommend that you take these results with a grain of salt. The AI knows only what you tell it; it does not know your entire personality. Remember, AI is a tool and is no substitute for human judgement. And it’s certainly not qualified to define you.
But my more important concern is, are you ok with an AI platform having all this data on you. What happens when the focus moves from acquiring user base (data) to a monetisation model – how will they use your data? Thoughts to ponder.
