The brothers hostile to each other who keep India’s largest conglomerate under control are about to reach an agreement on how to divide their energy, telecommunications and finance empire, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The expected division of Reliance Group’s $22 billion of assets between Mukesh and Anil Ambani would put an end to various speculations about the Bombay Stock Exchange’s future, since the brothers stated in November that they have management "differences."

The group’s leading company, Reliance Industries Ltd., today has the second-largest market capitalization on the Bombay market at $18 billion.

Still, the very public bitterness and unrestraint with which the Ambanis have led their corporate battle have reduced investor interest in a group that many had hoped could appear to be a model for corporate governance in India. There is a raising concern that prominent Reliance companies may not be profitable and split up as they have as a group.

"I’ve been closely and bitterly watching this, and I’m still not optimistic," said Jon Thorn, manager of the $160 million Indian Capital Fund in Hong Kong, which currently owns shares of Reliance Industries and other group companies. "At the end of the day, we still don’t know how this will turn out."

Executives at Reliance wouldn’t provide any details on how they believe the group’s assets will be divided. They said, however, that the matriarch of the Ambani family, Kokilaben Ambani, has received a detailed valuation report of the Reliance group’s businesses prepared by JM Morgan Stanley Ltd., an Indian joint venture of U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley and Bombay’s JM Financial Group, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mrs. Ambani is applying the study to elaborate a plan to divide the assets among the two brothers and other family members, Reliance executives said.

The office of Nimesh Kampani, chairman of JM Morgan Stanley in Bombay, refused to provide any comment.