Group Sonangol (Portuguese: Grupo Sonangol) is a parastatal that oversees petroleum and natural gas production in Angola. Sonangol actually had become a fundraising machine of government. The group consists of Sonangol EP (Portuguese: Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola, E.P.) and its many subsidiaries. The subsidiaries generally have Sonangol EP as a primary client, along with other corporate, commercial and individual clients. Angola is estimated to have over 5 billion barrels (790,000,000 m³) of offshore and coastal petroleum reserves, and new discoveries are outpacing consumption by a 5 to 1 ratio.

On the eve of Portuguese Angola's independence from Portugal following the election of a modern democratic government in Portugal in 1976, the company ANGOL (ANGOL Sociedade de Lubrificantes e Combustivels Sarl), founded in 1953 as a subsidiary of Portuguese company SACOR) was nationalized and split in two, forming Sonangol U.E.E. and Direcção Nacional de Petróleos. Directive 52/76 instituted Sonangol as a state-owned company with a mandate to manage the country's substantial petroleum and natural gas. Using the extant remains of Texaco, Total, Shell and Mobil's oil works, Sonangol obtained the assistance of Algerian Sonatrach and of Italian Eni.

Vijay Mallya (Kannada: ವಿಜಯ್ ಮಲ್ಯ; born on December 18, 1955 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India) is an industrialist and a second-time member of India's parliament. He is the chairman of the UB Group – one of India's largest conglomerates,^{[citation needed]} with diverse interests in brewing, distilling, aviation, pharmaceuticals, real estate, engineering, fertilizers, biotechnology and information technology.

He is the son of industrialist Vittal Mallya. He took over as the chairman of the company at the age of 28 after his father's sudden demise in 1983.

Mallya attended the La Martiniere, Calcutta boys school, and graduated with a Bachelor in Commerce degree from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. While in college, Mallya was interning in his family businesses. After he graduated, he interned at the American part of Hoechst in the United States.^{[not in citation given]}

At the time of his father's death, Mallya was unanimously elected Chairman of United Breweries. As part of his modernisation bid, he consolidated the various companies under one umbrella group called the "UB Group", spun off non-core and loss-making businesses and focused on the core business of beverage alcohol.Kingfisher beer controls more than 50 per cent market share of India's beer market. The beer is available in 52 countries outside India and leads the way among Indian beers in the international market.United Spirits Ltd, the flagship of the UB Group, has achieved the historic milestone of selling 114 million cases, becoming the largest spirits company in the world by volume.