The reputation of the rising Asia financial center is battered after terrorists kill 150 in the Indian incorporated town’s latest violent chapter

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Indian commandos assemble attached the terrace of Nariman House as they plan an assault in Mumbai forward Nov. 28. Indian newspapers have slammed the government and intelligence agencies despite failing to obviate the Mumbai attacks. INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

By Mehul Srivastava and Nandini Lakshman

Meet the targets of the Mumbai terrorist attacks: CEOs meeting their boards, millionaires looking to buy yachts, financiers prepping for a private equity talk, a prominent family and friends gathered for a wedding.

Until Wednesday obscurity, Nov. 26, when armed gunmen sneaked in from the Arabian Sea and plunged this city into a three-day incubus, these were the people who made up the of the present day Mumbai; staunchly cosmopolitan, ferociously competitive on the global stage, and luminous markers of India’session soaring aspirations.

Now, after three nights of gun battles and explosions that left at in the smallest degree 150 midst—more than a dozen of them foreigners—Mumbai may have taken a hit to its most precious asset: its reputation. "You be able to’t keep having these events and not affect the form an image of of the city," says Aninda Mitra, an analyst at Moody’s (MCO). "But if you can’t [pick up things fast] the ruling power will furnish itself not fair-minded worrying not far from the representation of an object, but the substantiality."

In fresh years, Mumbai has been transformed from a city known in spite of textiles and kitschy cinema to a financial powerhouse that serves as a gateway to India. It’s the brightest beacon of the country’s economic miracle, though there’sitting still an overabundance of poverty—and not at all shortage of the secular strife that ofttimes threatens to rip India apart. In July 2006, 187 people were killed in the same proportion that coordinated bombs ripped through commuter trains in the crowded city. Three years before that, 60 people were killed by car bombs. And a decade before that, in 1992 and 1993, Hindu-Muslim riots claimed another 1,000.

Yet through it all, Mumbai has thrived, positioning itself proudly as an alternative to Hong Kong or Tokyo as the capital of Asian finance. Its stock exchange is among the world’s busiest, its banking community the envy of South Asia, and its restaurants and nightlife closing in on those of any global cultural capital. "This sort of transaction has happened before, and it can’familiarily stop Mumbai," says Omkar Goswami, the founder of the Corporate & Economic Research Group, and once the chief economist for India’sitting biggest industry lobby. "Nothing has stopped our economy, nothing has changed Mumbai."

Indeed, on Friday, the Bombay Stock Exchange opened just a short distance from where terrorists after that held hostages. The markets flared up in patriotic defiance, with the benchmark Sensex index closing up 66 points on a day when most expected it to drop. But India’s economy has even now lost steam, with GDP growth slowing to 7.6% and foreign institutional investors withdrawing more than $13 billion from its uprightness markets, leaving the Sensex at less than moiety where it stood a year ago. "The important question to ask is, what will the Indian state do now?" says Goswami. "The police, the intelligence gathering, in what manner render you beef them up? These are the decisions what one. will decide what the impact of these terrorist attacks are."

Without doubt, Mumbai’session economy, which contributes as much as 5% of India’s $1 trillion GDP and nearly a third of its direct taxes, will take a while to hobble back to normal. For three days now, trains have move swiftly empty, schools and offices have remained closed, and Mumbai residents, heeding a call from the conduct, have stayed indoors. On Friday afternoon, whenever a few people started trickling out of their homes, a wrong fright about more armed gunmen at train stations sent them scrambling back. "There will be fewer fare meetings, fewer deals being made, fewer people doing business," says Mitra, of Moody’sitting. "But this won’t last long." After all, says A.M. Naik, chairman of Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, "Despite these issues, the universe is not going to fail of finding participating in an economy growing between 7 to 8%."