|
|
|
|
NR Group eyes Rs 1K cr revenues in 5 yrsIt was in the sleepy town of Mysore that N Ranga Rao changed the humble agarbatti into an FMCG product. Today, the NR Group is run by the third generation of this family and has grown to great heights. Cycle now has a 30% share in the agarbatti market, which is still largely unorganised.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 5:44 pm Public mining cos offer better pay, homes to rein attritionThe mining industry may have rejoiced when it was opened up to the private sector and foreign investment, but the joy seems to have been short lived. Public sector mining companies are fighting a fierce battle against attrition.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 4:17 pm Bangalore in need of second airportOver a 100 days after Bangalore\'s new international airport became functional, the cry for a second airport refuses to die down. This time, the Karnataka government too feels that the city needs a second airport.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 4:00 pm Eni sees crude prices dropping well below $100SAN MARTINO IN CAMPO, Italy (Reuters) - The chief executive of Italian oil company Eni said on Saturday he saw crude oil prices as low as $70 a barrel as demand softens.Source: Reuters: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 2:10 pm Tatas tell WB govt more land cannot be provided - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 2:04 pm Sun Direct DTH enters North and West India - Newstrack India
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 1:42 pm South India to be Indias new aviation hubInternational airlines are flocking to a new Indian aviation hubSouth India. Despite overcapacity in international skies and Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) price fluctuating over the last two months, international airlines are betting big on Bangalore and Hyderabad.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 1:24 pm Diesel for big cars, bulk users to cost more - domain-B
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:46 pm Bank recovery agents to undergo trainingDoes the term bank recovery agent remind you of a tough talking goon giving you sleepless nights? Think again. After a spate of complaints about misbehaviour with borrowers, batches of recovery agents are undergoing training on behaviour and banking as a mandated by the RBI.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:40 pm Sony targets 30% higher turnoverSony India aims to achieve a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore this year 30 per cent higher than what it had achieved last fiscal with the launch of its new series of LCD television.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:40 pm British tourism industry plunged into chaosBritain's tourism industry was plunged into chaos on Saturday as XL, the country's third-largest travel firm collapsed, leaving more than 85,000 people stranded in foreign resorts and cities.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:39 pm Murjani Group losing top brands, goes slow on capexThe Murjani Group, responsible for bringing international brands such as Gucci, Calvin Klein, Jimmy Choo and Tommy Hilfiger to India, seems to be in trouble. Murjanis have some major brands and have been forced to go slow on store addition.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:23 pm 'Drona' makers spend a fortune on villainThe much awaited film 'Drona' will possibly give Bollywood its most expensive villain ever in the form of actor Kay Kay Menon. Nearly Rs.220 million has been spent on his character, Ritz!Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 pm China steps up pace of FIs!China`s securities regulator, seeking to support a slumping stock market, has given approval for six more foreign institutions to invest in Chinese securities.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am Fed in crisis talks over Lehman Bros!The Federal Reserve Bank of New York held an emergency meeting Friday night with top Washington policymakers and major financial institutions to discuss the future of Lehman Brothers.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am GM to provide $10.6 bn to support Delphi!Delphi Corp said on late Friday that former parent General Motors Corp had agreed to provide an additional USD 4.6 billion in financial support to speed the auto parts maker`s emergence from bankruptcy.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am VW workers vent anger against EU, Porsche!Tens of thousands of workers demonstrated at Volkswagen`s headquarters Saturday against what they see as threats to their jobs from Porsche`s takeover efforts and from EU regulators.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am Google buys Korean blogging s/w firm!Google Inc has bought Korean blogging software developer Tatter and Company, the two companies said on Friday.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am Walgreen offers to buy Longs for $3 bn!Walgreen Co said on Friday that it offered to buy Longs Drug Stores Corp for USD 75 per share in cash, or USD 3 billion including debt, countering an offer from rival CVS Caremark that had been spurned by top investors.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am Oil near $102, awaits Hurricane Ike!Oil rose to around USD 102 a barrel on Friday, underpinned by Hurricane Ike which could threaten oil refineries in the United States, the world`s biggest energy consumer.Source: Zee News : Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:56 am Jt inquiry to probe assault on Bhushan Power & Steel employees - Business Standard
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:37 am Mahindra interested in Italy's Malaguti - reportMILAN (Reuters) - Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, India's top utility vehicle maker, is interested in Italian scooter maker Malaguti, an official at the Indian company was quoted as saying on Saturday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:11 am NCDEX, NSE to start power bourse in Oct - officialKOLKATA (Reuters) - The National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) will start its power bourse in equal joint venture with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) from the first week of October, a top official said on Saturday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 11:07 am West Bengal governor moots 'farm-factory balance' to solve Singur rowWest Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who has been trying to resolve the contentious land problem over Tata Motors' Nano factory in Singur, Saturday said a 'farm-factory balance' should be reached to resolve the impasse.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 13 Sep 2008 | 9:31 am Despite NSG waiver, equity markets go downThe Indian equity markets had a mixed week as the key indices surged on the first day of trading, thanks to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) giving a waiver to India, but then went down in the remaining four seasons due to weak global markets.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 13 Sep 2008 | 9:31 am Adani Group looking to buy palm oil plantations abroadAfter having gained sufficient strength in international trade, refining and marketing of edible oil in India, the Adani Group is now set for overseas acquisition as part of backward integration.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 9:08 am How Tatas chose Singur as base for Nano plansA comprehensive package of incentives subsidy on land, concessional power, a soft loan and tax paybacks to match the benefits that Tata Motors would have got in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh, was what got it to choose Singur in West Bengal for making its lowcost car Nano.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 9:00 am Lanco Infratech in talks with US, European EPCs for NforayLanco Infratech Ltd is in talks with European and USbased engineering procurement contractors (EPCs) for the groups foray into nuclear power generation, according to the Lanco Group Chairman, Mr L. Madhusudhan Rao.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 13 Sep 2008 | 8:57 am Bank recovery agents to undergo training - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 7:26 am Weekly Wrap: Sensex loses 483 pts as bears tighten grip - Sify
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 6:47 am NMC appeals Gov to implement 6th pay commission in J&K - Zee News
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 6:18 am Fed holds crisis talks as Lehman hunts for buyerWASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York held emergency talks with officials of major Wall Street firms on Friday night as concerns grew that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc may fail to find a willing buyer to save the ailing institution.Source: Reuters: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 4:27 am IT cos' currency woes see no end - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 13 Sep 2008 | 3:00 am Lehman shares slide on Paulson bailout reluctanceNEW YORK/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Concerns grew that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc may fail to find a willing buyer due to U.S. government reluctance to provide financial backing for the deal, sending its shares to a 14-year low.Source: Reuters: Money News | 13 Sep 2008 | 1:17 am EPFO to transfer funds to pvt managers on MondayFirst phase of transfer to take place 3 days ahead of CBT meeting. New Delhi, Sept. 12 The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has decided to transfer funds to newly-appointed private fund managers on September 15, senior officials in ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am No breakthrough in Singur talksKolkata, Sept. 12 The third round of talks between the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and Trinamool Congress leader, Ms Mamata Banerjee, failed to provide a breakthrough to the impasse over return of land from within ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am 3G spectrum charges not on combined revenuesShift in DoT stance may help faster roll-out as operators stand to gain. New Delhi, Sept. 12 Existing cellular players have got another incentive for rolling out third-generation mobile services quicker. The Department of Telecom has decided ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am IT stocks turn bearish, pull Sensex down to 14,000Companies unable to reap benefits of depreciating rupee. Mumbai, Sept. 12 The Sensex fell more than 2 per cent on Friday, partly due to the unusual phenomenon of IT stocks declining even as the rupee is depreciating against the dollar. ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Industrial growth touches 5-month high of 7.1% in JulyCapital goods, consumer durables do well. New Delhi, Sept. 12 High growth in production of capital goods and consumer durables in July 2008 pulled up the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) to a five month high of 7.1 per cent, though it ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Forex reserves down $6.5 bMumbai, Sept. 12 Forex reserves declined by $6.498 billion in the week ended September 5, three times as much as it did a week ago, chiefly because the dollar appreciated against other global currencies. ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Swatch plans joint venture for Indian marketDecides to build a dedicated distribution network. The Swatch group, the world’s largest watch company with annual revenues of $ 6 billion, is now seriously eyeing the Indian subcontinent as a good market to expand. ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Kharif rice output to top 84 m tonnes: PawarSpike in coverage under rice, soyabean, castor. New Delhi, Sept 12 The Union Food and Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, on Friday, expressed confidence that the country’s rice production during the current kharif season “will ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am IOC may take 2 mt of Cairn’s crudeLooking at a discount of $18 a barrel. Panipat, Sept. 12 Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOC) has indicated that it could take about 2 million tonnes of the crude Cairn India plans to produce at its Barmer oil field in Rajasthan, as long as it is ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Markets this weekThe much awaited NSG-waiver for India coming through and the US Government decision to bail out mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave a boost to Indian stocks on Monday. The former lifted the power and capital goods stocks, ...Source: Business Line - Home Page | 13 Sep 2008 | 12:00 am Fannie, Freddie may cause big credit headache - Reuters
Source: Google News India - Business | 12 Sep 2008 | 11:39 pm Tata move on new Nano base on MondayIndications are that the company has "more or less decided" that the car will now roll out of its Pantnagar facility in UttarakhandSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 11:19 pm Comeback story: IIP in July surges 7.1% - Economic Times
Source: Google News India - Business | 12 Sep 2008 | 11:09 pm FACTBOX - A brief history of Lehman BrothersREUTERS - U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers has seen its shares shed three-quarters of their value this week as it announced a record $3.9 billion loss and a restructuring plan. The bank faces the prospect of being acquired by rivals, raising the specter of an end to itsSource: Reuters: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:52 pm Wall St Week Ahead - Wide financial sector fears to drive marketNEW YORK (Reuters) - Even if the fate of Lehman Brothers is resolved this weekend, Wall Street is likely to remain on edge next week because of fears over the health of other big financial companies.Source: Reuters: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:28 pm It has been a jolly July for the industryIn contrast to the very poor show by the industrial sector during the months of May and June 2008, a recovery of sorts was discernible during JulySource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:25 pm Gold soars on weak dollar, Hurricane Ike fearsNEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Gold ended sharply higher on Friday, as the dollar fell on weak U.S. retail sales data and as Hurricane Ike, a potential catastrophe, moved toward the southwestern United States.Source: Reuters: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:24 pm Trai chief 'not consulted on 3G rules change'The regulator has not been consulted before the government amended the 3G (third generation) telecom service guidelines, according to Nripendra MisraSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:23 pm In a decade, farmers will drive Maseratis & brokers tractorsHe co-founded the Quantum fund in 1970, a global investment partnership which made a gain of 4200% in 10 years after launchSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:21 pm Dollar-dart may trip Infy guidanceWith the US currency getting ever stronger, tech major Infosys Technologies' dollar guidance for the current quarter and the full year appear set to go off-kilter.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:20 pm Banks can't rest on their laurels: RBIThere are about 15 million no frill accounts opened mostly by public sector banks in the rural areas. Thorat didn't give numbers as to how many of those accounts are unused.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:18 pm NHB seeks public-pvt partnerships for housingThe National Housing Bank is vouching to finance affordable housing projects for public-private partnership to tide over the huge demand and supply void in the segmentSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:17 pm Now hiring: Anyone, as a life insurance agentThe boom in the number of life insurance companies has caused a shortage of the industry's most precious asset - the life insurance agent.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 10:16 pm Household chores are good for the kidsQuiz for the day: How much time each day, on average, does a child of 6-12 years spend on household chores? If you guessed more than a half-hour, you’re wrong. Children are spending a mere 24 minutes a day doing cleaning, laundry and other housework—a 12% decline since 1997 and a 25% drop from 1981 levels, says Sandra Hofferth, director of the Maryland Population Research Centre at the University of Maryland, based on a study of 1,343 children. In the glacial realm of sociological change, that amounts to a free fall.  Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint Of course, children aren’t doing housework partly because they’re spending more time on such worthy pursuits as reading, studying and youth groups, Hofferth’s data show. Parents are doing less housework themselves, hiring help or just making peace with dust bunnies. And clearly, some housework is best relegated to museums. While Allison O’Steen, Tryon, North Carolina, loved her late mother, she says her habit of ironing sheets isn’t something O’Steen, a mother of two, wants to pass on. Nevertheless, research into the role of housework in human relationships suggests we may be losing something of value here. While most parents today focus mostly on teaching kids self-reliance—keeping themselves clean, fed and botulism-free—the benefits of learning housework run deeper. For example: Pitching in at home has become a crucial marriage-preservation skill for young men. Studies show parents still assign more housework to girls than boys. Yet these same young women hope as adults to find men who will help out; 90% of 60 women in the age group of 18-32 studied by Kathleen Gerson, a New York University sociology professor, said they hoped to share housework and child care with spouses “in a committed, mutually supportive and egalitarian way”. After controlling for other factors, US marriages tend to be more stable when men participate more in domestic tasks, says a study of 506 US couples published in 2006 in the American Journal of Sociology. Mindful of the issue, Kathy Helmetag, Troy, Michigan, is instilling “the whole housekeeping thing into” her sons, 7 and 9, she says. Years from now, she believes, their homemaking skills will help them “score a few points with any significant others”. Housework has unique value in instilling a habit of serving others. Analysing data on more than 3,000 adults, Alice Rossi, an emerita professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Amherst, found doing household chores as a child was a major, independent predictor of whether a person chose to do volunteer or other community work as an adult. Thus for parents who value service, housework is an important teaching tool. David Jackson has consistently required his twins, 16, to help around the house, starting as toddlers when they began picking up their toys and adding harder chores, such as stocking bathrooms or mowing the lawn, at each new stage. He sees the chores as a way of teaching empathy and “stewardship—taking care of the community assets”, says the Tulsa, Oklahoma, father. “It helps them realize the world is not all about them.” If you enjoy a domestic art as an outlet for creativity or love, it’s worth passing on. I love sewing; making prom dresses years ago with my stepdaughter is a fond memory. But I was always rushing around too much when my two biological kids were small to sit down and teach them to sew. With 20-20 hindsight, I’m sorry that at ages 18 and 20, they still don’t know how. If you lack time to teach a home art you love, look for other avenues. Keeping the family TV tuned to the Food Channel inspired Cindy Harris’ son Mikey, 8, to love cooking. For show-and-tell in class II, he whipped up a chef’s salad; he concocts novel cookie recipes with chocolate, coconut, butterscotch and pecans. While the cookies can be strange, says the Novato, California, mother of two, the whole family nevertheless cherishes Mikey’s gifts. Write to wsj@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:45 pm Crisis intensifies as Trinamool chief walks out of negotiationsKolkata: The Singur crisis intensified on Friday with Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal’s principal opposition leader, walking out of talks with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee after spurning the state government’s latest offer to end her campaign against Tata Motors Ltd’s small car project. This was the second meeting between the two, in which the state government offered 60-70 acres for rehabilitation of 13,000 farmers from whom land was seized for the Tata Motors factory.  Stubborn stance: Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress says the government must return at least 300 acres from within the project area. Indranil Bhoumik / Mint Banerjee said she expected the government to abide by the agreement brokered by the state’s governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Sunday. In that agreement, the government had committed to return “maximum land” from within the project area, but the government has since backtracked, saying it was impossible to do so without killing the project. “I still hope the government will fulfil commitments made by it in the agreement,” Banerjee told a press conference. A four-member committee has been formed to assess the availability of land in and around the Singur factory, where Tata Motors has suspended work. Also Read This committee is vertically split—two of them, activists of the Trinamool Congress, say land from within the project area could be returned and the other two, representatives of the state government, say that is impossible. Meanwhile, Tata Motors on Friday dragged the West Bengal government to court for revealing confidential details of the agreement under which it located the Rs1 lakh Nano car project in Singur. The Calcutta high court passed an order restraining the government from revealing the text of Tata Motors’ agreement with West Bengal Industrial Development Corp. Ltd, or WBIDC, after the company’s lawyer argued that making it public would hurt the auto maker’s interests. West Bengal’s commerce and industry secretary, Sabyasachi Sen, said the government had not disclosed the confidential annexures of the agreement, which was made public by the government after the Trinamool Congress demanded it. The four-page document was posted on WBIDC’s website earlier this month. West Bengal’s commerce and industry minister Nirupam Sen had revealed almost all the contents of the document in the state assembly soon after signing the deal in March last year. The agreement indicates the lease rent and the incentives to be offered by the government for the factory. Besides providing 645 acres for a lease rent of Rs1 crore a year (for the first five years) and a host of tax sops, the government offered electricity to the factory at a subsidized rate of Rs3 per kWh and a Rs200 crore loan at 1%, the repayment of which will start after 20 years. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:41 pm Infosys in cross-currency winds, may miss guidanceBangalore: In a move that could indicate a significant slowing of business for Indian IT firms, Infosys Technologies Ltd may declare revenue lower than previously estimated for the three months ended 30 September on account of the dollar’s rise and a slowdown in the US. While the company itself would appear to have been laying the ground for this over the past few weeks with talk of a difficult economic environment in the US, the biggest market for Indian IT firms, and an increasing focus on the domestic market, things came to a head Thursday night when securities firm CLSA released a report that said Infosys was likely to miss its dollar guidance for the second quarter as well as for the entire year. Also See Dollar Doldrums (Graphic) The company’s chief financial officer V. Balakrishnanadmitted that the dollar’s appreciation could hurt the company. “It is too early to speculate on the guidance now. (However), there could be impact on the reported dollar numbers because of the sharp cross-currency movements.” The dollar has appreciated against currencies such as the British pound, the euro and the Australian dollar in which Infosys bills around 28% of its revenue. The CLSA report sent shares of Infosys and other IT firms plunging. Shares of Infosys fell 6% to close at Rs1,644.10 each on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday, on a day when the exchange’s benchmark Sensex index fell 2.3% to 14,000.81. The exchange’s IT index fell 4.6% to 3,806.74. Govind Agarwal, an analyst at UBS, said the “sharp and sudden” appreciation of the US dollar against the pound and the euro would hit the revenue of Indian IT firms, in dollar terms, by one, or two percentage points. In a report, he said the US dollar had risen 5.5%, 13.8%, and 13% respectively against the rupee, the pound and the euro in the current quarter. Indian IT firms were hit by an appreciating local currency in 2007-08 because almost all (or much of their) billings are in other currencies. This year, they have been hit by a slowing of business in the US, an effect of the credit crisis-induced slowdown in that country. And they haven’t been helped by the dollar, which has appreciated not just against the rupee, but also against other major currencies. In an interview with Mint on 1 September, Infosys chief executiveS. Gopalakrishnan had said there was “still a lot of uncertainty left” in the US and “bad news...is coming in everyday”. S. Mahalingam, executive director and CFO of India’s largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd said that the environment is still “challenging”. “The growth will be slower than last year. Nasscom (India’s software lobby group) has said there is slower growth 21-25%, at least 10% lower than last year, let us keep it at that. We will see (foreign exchange) losses (and) most of the companies will see the same.” However, Wipro Ltd does not see currency volatility having an impact on its September quarter earnings, a senior official said on Friday. “We don’t rely on cross-currency volatility to drive our business,” Suresh Vaswani, the joint chief executive of Wipro’s IT business, told reporters. On Thursday, H.R. Binod, vice-president of the unit Infosys set up this year to focus on India, said to The Wall Street Journal that the firm was sharpening its focus on the domestic market. Billing rates on domestic contracts are typically lower than those on overseas ones. The statements by Gopala-krishnan and Binod could be one way in which Infosys is preparing investors for a relatively poor performance in the quarter ending September, although the firm is renowned in the stock market for “underpromising” and “overdelivering”. The last time Infosys had trouble meeting its revenue and profit estimates—it eventually did, but barely—was in early 2002. Every quarter since, the company has met, and often exceeded these estimates. In its report, CLSA said that because of the “cross-currency headwind”, Infosys would have to revise downward its revenue growth guidance for the September quarter by two percentage points. Infosys had previously said that it would earn revenue of between $1.22 billion and $1.23 billion (Rs5,588-5,633 crore today) in the quarter, its second of fiscal year 2008-09. Research firm Forrester Inc. said in a report released this week that 40% of large businesses across sectors have cut their IT budgets this year, including almost half of financial services companies, which are typically the biggest spenders on technology. K. Raghu and Reuters contributed to this story. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:37 pm Tea Board plans testing of export samples to check adulterationKochi: Trying to deal with cases of significant adulteration of exported tea, a proposal to have test samples of tea consignments to Pakistan, Iraq and Egypt is being finalized by the Tea Board, the Indian government’s trade promotion body. In early August, Tea Board officials and others raided a factory near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu and shut it down after detecting alleged massive adulteration. Since then, the tea industry has been demanding stern steps for quality assurance of tea consignments moving out from the country, says Basudeb Banerjee, chairman of the board.  Industry demand : A tea garden near Agartala, Tripura. Tea Board officials say the industry has been asking for stern quality-assurance steps after the seizure of about 26 tonnes of spurious tea meant for export. PTI This isn’t the first time that issues have cropped up with Indian tea exports. In 2006, India exported 41.33 million kg of tea, valued at Rs212 crore, to Iraq at an average unit price of about Rs51 a kg, the highest volume shipped to any country that year. However, issues of non-payment by Iraq cropped up with the buyers claiming that some of the tea was of inferior quality. While the non-payment issue has largely been settled and some 5 million kg of tea already sent to Iraq since April, tea sellers want to make sure no new quality issues crop up. Banerjee said there have been multiple suggestions from the industry. While one group wanted mandatory pre-shipment sample tests for all tea to be sold below $1.5-1.75 (about Rs70-80) a kg, there was also the view that samples of only consignemnts going to Pakistan, Iraq and Egypt, which is an emerging market for Indian tea, be tested. Click here to read Tea Board plans tougher export quality norms Since the price quoted for tea going to these countries could be lower than $2, there were fears of adulteration. Banerjee said having mandatory pre-shipment tests for all consignments would bring back the days of bureaucratic control. According to him, an expert panel can test the quality and give clearance within a short period so that shipments will not be affected. D.P. Maheswari, president of the United Planters Association of Southern India, says pre-shipment tests can help improve the image of the commodity being exported. According to him, pre-shipment tests for chilli, made mandatory by the Spices Board in 2004 following discovery of a cancer-causing dye in imported chillies by the European Union, had helped improve the image of the Indian chilli. “There has to be an assurance to the markets buying from here that the material they get will meet the best of quality norms. There has to be a quality-ensuring mechanism in place so that markets outside can readily buy from here,” says N. Dharmaraj, convener of the Golden Leaf India Awards, a contest for tea manufactured in south India. N. Sriram, chief executive of Coimbatore-based Contemporary Tea Auctioneers Pvt. Ltd, says the export markets should also be informed about the steps being taken to ensure quality. According to him, a group of experts in the tea sector should be entrusted with checking the quality. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:35 pm Rajesh Sawhney | Big business with a low profileReliance Big Entertainment, the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s media and entertainment division, has been garnering a continuous stream of media coverage since a landmark announcement made at Cannes earlier this year. In May, the company announced that it would invest a billion dollars (around Rs4,400 crore) in seven Hollywood production houses—owned by stars such as George Clooney and Tom Hanks—to develop 30 scripts and, eventually, 10 films. This was followed by an agreement for an equally big tie-up with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, which is expected to be signed soon.  Planet Hollywood: Sawhney’s company will now face off with the biggest film studios in the US. Sawhney’s reluctance to be in the limelight could perhaps be explained by his choice of employers. Before Reliance Entertainment, he worked with the leading media house Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL) for 14 years. Both are companies that prefer their ventures, rather than the managers behind them, to hog media attention—key executives are seldom found making big statements or giving expansive interviews. Eventually, Sawhney agrees to meet for lunch at The Oberoi in Mumbai. On the apppointed day, he arrives 7 minutes before time and graciously sends me a text message saying: “Reached. Take your time.” “I will have a light lunch,” he says as we make ourselves comfortable at Tiffin, the hotel’s Pacific Rim and Indian cuisine restaurant. As we browse through the menu, Sawhney asks me if “life is too hectic”. I am forthright: “I start each day with at least 10 items on my to-do list and go back home with half of them not done.” I add that while a colleague felt I was inefficient, a friend thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Sawhney has a different perspective on the situation: “I don’t agree with either of them. I say it’s good to have an unfinished list than to not have one at all. For me, it’s the nature of the list that will determine the good and bad.” After a pause, he adds: “The list should point to a consistent direction. That’s all I will worry about.” We haven’t branded our media and entertainment business ‘Big’ for nothing. Today, Sawhney leads a company that is trying to build a sweeping media and entertainment enterprise on the back of emerging technology. And even before the complete roll-out of the business, the firm has been valued at $3 billion. In March, billionaire investor George Soros expressed interest in picking up a 3% stake for $100 million—something that even the most established media and entertainment (M&E) companies can’t boast of. While many have shrugged off the business as a product of Anil Ambani’s obsession with media, the same people admit privately that Sawhney is one of the few business leaders in the M&E industry with a profound understanding of new media and the technology that supports it. “In the past three years, I have met with top media owners and executives. I asked them all about their vision of the industry. Nobody could tell me anything beyond the fact that digital is the future of the media industry. Their other obsession is developing markets such as India and China. And most of them don’t know what exactly to do in these markets,” he says. “Everybody is shooting in the dark.” At BCCL, Sawhney launched and managed some of the company’s newest ventures, such as Times FM, Times TV and Indiatimes.com. In the same vein, at Reliance Entertainment, Sawhney is rolling out initiatives across a number of innovative platforms. Reliance Entertainment currently runs a social networking site called BigAdda.com; a video-on-demand and DVD rental service, BIGFlix.com; an online gaming portal Zapak.com; and the mobile gaming service Jump Games. It just acquired a majority stake in US-based Willow TV, an online cricket streaming video portal. BIG TV, its DTH broadcasting service, was launched recently and the company has also announced plans to invest in the US in mobile gaming and cinemas. All this activity might look frenzied and the company’s strategy akin to carpet-bombing, but Sawhney is a cautious planner. For instance, he finds the current pace of action in the print and television business a bit misplaced. “I like Bill Gates’ statement on how we try to overestimate change in the short term and underestimate it in the longer term. In the last year, so many new TV channels and newspapers have been launched to tap the short-term opportunity. Nobody seems to be thinking about the long-term. Will these businesses be sustainable five years down the line?” he wonders. Besides new media, Sawhney has developed a deeper understanding of the traditional industry as well. “In the US, the print boom happened 50 years ago, TV flourished 30 years ago, radio even before that, and now that market is trying to figure out the digital medium,” he says. “In India, however, the past, the present and the future are playing out simultaneously. That makes this market both extremely challenging as well as attractive.” Sawhney’s short-term vision for Reliance Entertainment is quite audacious: He sees it growing into a $10 billion venture in the next five to six years. “We haven’t branded our media and entertainment business ‘Big’ for nothing,” he says with a laugh. “Once we connect all the dots, you will see it as a leading global player with interests across every single media and entertainment domain.” With a successful professional record behind him, Sawhney is a prized scalp in the industry. Suitors have approached him several times. Yet he says he is “not jumping ship” anytime soon. “Availing of opportunities simply because they come your way is not my way of leading life. I believe in stability, in giving and getting one’s due to the fullest, be it a professional relationship or a personal one,” he says. His personal life exemplifies that stability. Sawhney is married to Chhaya, the girl he met in a University Special bus (the buses that the Delhi Transport Corporation runs for college students in the Capital) during his Delhi College of Engineering days. After dating for five years, the duo got married when they were both 25. Chhaya, who has a doctorate in linguistics, initially worked with Tata Interactive Systems but then realized her interest lay in writing books for children. Her career, however, took a backseat as Sawhney’s professional life became more demanding and their two sons, Rohan and Arjun, now 14 and 7 respectively, started seeking more attention. Sawhney’s hectic schedule doesn’t allow him to spend much time with them, but if he is in Mumbai, his weekends are committed to them without exception. “For me, a balance in personal and professional commitments is a must,” he says. CURRICULUM VITAE Rajesh Sawhney Born: 2 February 1966 Education: BE from Delhi College of Engineering in 1987; MBA from Mumbai University in 1990; fellowship in globalization from London School of Economics in 2000; advanced management programme from Harvard Business School in 2007 Work Profile: President, Reliance Entertainment, leading the media and entertainment business of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group since 2005 Hobbies: Watching cricket and films, playing soccer with his two sons Favourite cricket and film stars: Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Farhan Akhtar Management mantra: Think big Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:27 pm Gaming review | Empires in the living roomSid Meier’s Civilization Revolution is by far the best strategy game to grace a living room console. This is a console game that history and social studies teachers should encourage their students to enjoy. This is a game that parents should want to play with their children. It is not overstating Civilization’s importance to describe it as the most engaging, diabolically addictive, finely crafted strategy game series around. Since the series’ debut in 1991, millions of people have straggled in late to work and let homework go by the wayside as they have fallen into the grips of Civilization’s insidious “just one more turn” play style. Taking the role of a leader of one of history’s great cultures (such as the Romans, the Chinese, the Zulu, the Aztecs, the French, the Mongols, or the Americans), the player begins with a single primitive settler in an unknown world around 4000 BC. The player guides the tribe through the grand sweep of history: building cities, making discoveries like the alphabet and iron-working before uncovering the secrets of math, organized religion, gunpowder, the printing press and later, of course, the Internet. Rival nations are also trying to build a civilization that can stand the test of time. Civilization Revolution’s great victory is that Meier and his team at Firaxis Games, with support from their publisher Take-Two, have succeeded in translating the classic elements of the Civilization series into a form that performs gloriously on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and even in hand-held form on the Nintendo DS. Civilization Revolution was clearly designed from the beginning as a console game. Some of the more esoteric elements of the PC versions, like pollution and starvation, have been left out. But the basic elements of the Civilization experience—“Do I build a barracks or a library?”, “Do I pay tribute to the Mongols next door or go to war?”—have been balanced delicately and polished to a high gloss. I’ve spent about 30 hours with the 360 and DS versions of the game recently, and I’m nowhere close to bored. At the moment, my Roman empire is trying to fend off an invasion by the Germans while I stall the Indians on the opposite border with gifts of technology. Soon, I’ll smash them both with my armoured tanks. Or maybe I’ll build Hollywood and win over their cities with my cultural influence. What to do? Just one more turn... Game: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS ©2008/The New York Times Write to lounge@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:23 pm A Manga classicIt is common for a book, a comic book, to be made into a movie. Some books make good movies. Others, not so. Still, the release of a movie usually tends to increase interest and sometimes, sales of a comic book, even in India. That this doesn’t always happen is evident from unsold copies of V for Vendetta at my neighbourhood bookstore. As CF winds down to its conclusion a few months from now, and as this writer tries to tie up loose ends by writing on books he has thus far ignored but which form part of the must-have-must-read pantheon of comic books, it is but inevitable that the Oldboy books come up.  Oldboy: On a journey of discovery. This writer remembers reading in the papers about a Bollywood movie based on Oldboy although it’s difficult to imagine how they would have told the story. The plot of Oldboy isn’t an easy one to tell, although it is a simple one. A man is kidnapped and locked in a private jail (between the floors of a tall building) for reasons that remain unknown. He is released after 10 years. The man, Shinichi Goto, then sets out to find out who did this to him and why. The English translation of Oldboy was considered good enough to win an Eisner Award (sort of like the Oscars for comic books) in 2007. Like all Manga (and like some Manga translated into English), the book has to be read from back to front and right to left (the reason being that most Manga was originally meant to be read on Japan’s crowded metro and the dimension of the books as well as the size meant that they could be held in one hand and read easily. The spine on the right means readers can, with some practice, just move the page without flipping with just a bit of pressure). This writer has often wondered how left-handed people cope. Write to Sukumar at cultfiction@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:18 pm Tata Motors files legal salvo in Singur battleTata Motors has filed a Writ Petition against the West Bengal Government and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) alleging that the government has violated the provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005. The Calcutta High Court has said that the government should not publish parts of the agreement with Tata.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:15 pm The return of SpringIt is 1am and I am standing on Karluv Most or Charles Bridge, near St John of Nepomuk. The Czech martyr saint’s statue is one of several baroque figures on either side of the historic bridge. I’m stretching, trying to touch a brass nail with my left foot and a golden cross with my right hand. It isn’t an unusual drunken-driving test I’m taking; I am being guided in the proper execution of a good-luck ritual by David Rakusan, an archaeologist friend.  History’s cradle: Dating back to the 12th century, the Old Town Square started life as the central marketplace for Prague. Govind Dhar His voice sounds unnaturally loud in the quiet of the hour. Even the astronomical clock in the Old Town Square, one of Prague’s landmarks, is silent. During the day, wooden models of the Apostles go round in circles on the hour as a skeleton beats a drum in time to the loud chimes. It attracts quite a crowd but Ondra Abonyi, another friend, tells us that that is not all we should know about it. “The most important thing about this clock,” he says, “is to remember to hold on to your wallet when you look up. This is a great spot for pickpockets!” From a distance, Prague Castle looks down at us ominously, one of the many Gothic facades that make up the inky skyline. On this most unusual city tour, Rakusan has been explaining Prague’s history, architecture and culture in between visits to its bars and pubs, a prime case of enhancing and destroying brain cells simultaneously. Also see:Trip planner/Prague Home to close to 1.5 million people, the city is a bit like a World War II movie set, with fragments of Balkan alleyways, well-trodden Italian cobbled streets and a generous helping of the Slavic macabre. Gargoyles, flying buttresses and pastel-toned buildings with Faberge egg motifs stand tall everywhere.  The Astro Clock is mounted on the southern wall of Old Town City Hall in the Old Town Square. Govind Dhar Discussing the city’s architecture with Abonyi’s gang of academics at Mlyn—once a waterwheel mill and now an arty bar with award-winning photographs hung across its trendy white interiors—I propose that it was quite possible the city’s great litterateurs sat in bars such as this one and discussed matters other than the hypothetical and the metaphysical with friends, just as we were doing. “So in essence you are suggesting you are Kafka!” Tomas Samek challenges me. Before I can think of a retort, Abonyi blurts out: “I don’t care about Kafka! Just as long as you understand that Pilsner is God.”  The statue of John Nepomuk on Charles Bridge. Govind Dhar So it seems fitting that we land up in Karlovy Vary, a city less than two hours away and famed for its natural springs. Even in the throes of its 43rd international film festival—everything from major Hollywood productions to obscure, downright trippy and achingly fashionable movies play for eight days annually—the old and the young queue up to taste the magical waters in a majestic estate, complete with Romanesque colonnades and filigree work. “Each of the 13 springs here has a different temperature and taste,” explains Teresa Koziskova. After sampling six types of the salty-sweet waters, and catching a few films, we call it a day. Back in Prague, Samek announces it’s time to initiate us into one of the city’s refined pastimes. “A strip club?” I ask. “No, something even better,” counters Samek. Moments later, in a state of euphoria at mastering Naaz dravi—the Czech equivalent of “Cheers!”—we stumble into a bar facing a main street. It looks like any other bar, except that huddled at tables, people are discreetly rolling what look like fat, Bob Marley-worthy joints. In between conversations with strangers on Prague’s herbal high hot spots and consistent requests for Manu Chao, we sink a few ales and head for a notoriously popular club called Chateau Rouge. Architectural meanderings take on a different meaning here, with underground corridors and pathways leading to a series of rooms and chambers with labyrinthine logic. Red lights glare blindingly at us and revellers jam to different tunes, beats and DJs in every room. Hours pass, glasses empty and frenetic dancing ensues. Come closing time, we are shunted out by bouncers into the cold light of day. It is 5am. Prague is waking up, and the red light of the club gives way to the soft blue of the morning. As the new sun lights up the skyline and Prague’s historic buildings tower above us steadfastly as we make our way home, I know that if wishes came true, I’d probably be living in a city just like this. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:12 pm Invest in what India needs to have and use: Jim RogersMumbai: Investment guru, college professor and author Jim Rogers is best known for the Quantum Fund he co-founded with George Soros. A person who doesn’t mince words on the policies of central banks, politicians and the need to invest in commodities, he was in India to inaugurate a commodity-linked equity fund launched by Birla Sun Life Asset Management Co. Ltd. Cutting quite a flamboyant figure with his blue bow tie with pink stripes and suspenders that have charts of stocks, commodities and currencies etched on them, he spoke on the bull market in commodities, inflation, crude oil and the subprime crisis. On stocks and bonds  Straight talk: Investment guru Rogers says if you are in the water business here, you are going to make a for tune. Ashesh Shah/Mint We are going to have more inflation. I tell people all the time to sell any bonds if they hold any. Anywhere in the world. I tell people’s bond portfolio managers to get another job because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. On commodities Most people need a sector in order to make money. We have a sizeable market where things are going up all the time. We have such a market—raw materials, natural resources, commodities—call it what you will. We have long periods of rise in commodity prices, followed by long periods of decline followed by long rise again. It’s been going on for a long, long, long time. Commodities are the second largest asset class in the world, second only to foreign currency. We have a bull market in commodities as we’ve had many times in the past. If you’ve got to own something, you got to be owning commodities because supply-demand imbalances are in commodities and not in stocks. On oil declining Oil doubled in the last year. Whenever you have something doubling in a year, its overdue for correction. And we’ve had world economic recession. You put this together… This is the way markets work. There is nothing evil, or nefarious, or dangerous about it.The bull market in oil started in 1999. Oil has gone down 40%, or 50% three times and everytime people said the bull market is over. But it’s not over. There is a correction happening and I’ve no idea how long it will go on. But I do know that nobody’s discovered an major oil fields in the past 40 years. Supply has declined for everything. Short of a perpetual economic collapse, prices of oil will go higher and higher. On subprime crisis A lot of mortgages were ill-conceived to say the least. We’ve had the worst credit bubble in world history and it originated from America. We are now paying the price. Of course, the whole world is paying the price. And it’s not over yet. It’s going to last longer than anyone expected. We are going to have the worst recession in America since the second world war. If they (the US government) keep on propping up failed companies (such as Freddie and Fannie) the situation will get worse and worse. America is the largest economy in the world and it’s going through hard times...so anyone who does business with America will be affected. On agri-business In agriculture, you invest in about anything. It has recently come down, but I expect it to much much higher over the next decade, or so. The world has the lowest inventory of agricultural products for the past 50, or 60 years. The number of acres, or hectares (under cultivation) are declining. Lots of what we consume—sugar, wheat—we are using it in fuel tanks. In my view, therefore, it is a good place to invest. Top picks in commodities Things like sugar and cotton are far, far below their all-time highs. I am not saying these are the best, but I will go and do some homework and some research on coffee, sugar and cotton...maybe silver...maybe Zinc... These are the places I see an opportunity. Top picks in India If Asia is going to continue to grow, if India is going to continue to grow, the best way to invest is to buy things that India has to have and has to consume. The best is commodities. Some (equity) sectors are going to do well whatever the situation. India has a huge water problem. Gigantic. If you are in the water business, you are going to make a fortune. If you are in the agri business, you are going to make a fortune. Indian tourism has a great future. On the dollar I’m pessimistic on the US dollar and have been for a long long time. The US dollar is a terribly flawed currency and getting worse. Many people are worried about paper currency and are looking for something to protect themselves against inflation. The dollar has been going down for the past seven years. Everyone is pessimistic on the dollar. I still try to get out of all the dollars I have. Some countries are already moving away from the dollar (for merchandise trading). Eventually, everyone will move away from it. On inflation Inflation is going to get worse in the whole world. It is next year’s story, next decade’s story. Part of is due to money supply (increasing), but supply and demand imbalance too contribute. Unless they destroy demand, which I don’t think is going to happen, you are going to see worse and worse inflation. On controls and bans Controls have always been negative. They have never worked and have only worsened the situation, throughout history. When things go up, they (politicians) say a temporary ban will save us. They say that inflation in India is because of futures trade. It’s astonishing anybody can say something like that. If they (politicians) want prices to go down, I suggest they go to the fields and produce some more food. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:01 pm Slow lane, not the ditchThe two most recent bits of data released by the government suggest that the Indian economy still has some growth momentum left and that inflation is tapering off. Wholesale price inflation has dropped from 12.6% in the first week of August to 12.1% in the last week. And industrial production grew at an annual rate of 7.1% in July, against the consensus forecast of 6%. But hasty conclusions are unwarranted. Inflation is still way outside the Reserve Bank of India’s comfort zone and the relatively strong rise in industrial production is largely due to the 22% jump in the production of capital goods. It is still not clear whether this is because of a statistical quirk, or because of a few large projects. Though industrial output in July has been better than expected, average growth over the first four months of this fiscal year is much lower compared with what it was in the previous year. Our overall sense is that there is a mild slowdown on, not a sharp drop in growth. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:01 pm Banks, other firms to set up 4th exchangeMumbai: At least a dozen banks, financial institutions and other companies are joining hands to set up India’s fourth exchange for currency futures despite a drop in trading volume in the instruments, launched in the last week of August on an exchange set up by the National Stock Exchange (NSE). If the project gets the nod of capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), it will follow NSE and two other exchanges that will be set up by the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), and Asia’s oldest stock exchange, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)—both of which have secured Sebi’s approval. Kerala-based private lender, Federal Bank Ltd, has taken the lead to set up the new exchange and its partners in the venture include Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank, Allahabad Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Standard Chartered Bank. Metals and Minerals Trading Corp. Ltd, Securities Trading Corp. of India Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, India’s largest information technology firm, are also partnering the banks in the project. A person familiar with the development told Mint on condition of anonymity that HDFC Bank Ltd, Deutsche Bank AG and Larsen and Toubro Ltd may pick up equity in the proposed stock exchange. He said these institutions are also in talks with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest commodities exchange, and a benchmark one, to pick up a stake in the new exchange. Audit and consulting firm firm Ernst and Young is advising the group of companies and banks on the project. A presentation on it was made to Sebi on Thursday and the new exchange might be called India Stock Exchange Ltd or India Securities and Stock Exchange Ltd, this person said. Mint could not independently contact all the interested banks and companies to confirm their participation, but Federal Bank chairman M. Venugopalan said the proposed exchange will be widely held by many banks and firms. An executive at Sebi, who did not want to be named, confirmed that the presentation was made. Sebi regulations prohibit a single entity from holding more than a 5% stake in a stock exchange and any entity that wants to hold more than a 1% stake in stock exchanges needs the regulator’s approval. However, there could be relaxation on the ownership norms, as a recent Sebi discussion paper has proposed that stock exchanges, banks, clearing corporations and insurance companies be allowed to take up to a 15% stake in bourses. “Competition forces everyone to be more efficient and more innovative,” said Jayanth R. Varma, professor of finance and accounting at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. “In case of currency futures, competition is already there in form of the over-the-counter market. But competition between exchanges will still be good.” However, A.V. Rajwade, an independent foreign exchange consultant, has a different view. According to him, the market may be diluted if three or four exchanges are allowed to operate. “What is needed is liquidity. I don’t know if three or four players are really needed. Ultimately, if you look at it in terms of participation because liquidity attracts players, one of them them will dominate,” Rajwade said. NSE introduced currency futures trading on 29 August but there are not too many takers for the product on account of so-called margin requirements. The average trading volume in the currency futures market is around $45 million (about Rs206 crore), compared with $3.5 billion in the forward markets in India, and a $1 billion daily turnover of non-deliverable forwards (NDF) overseas. NDFs are those contracts which do not require settlement in dollars (this is made in the local currency). Even as the new exchanges are trying to boost their membership by offering discounts, NSE said it will introduce futures in other currencies such as the Japanese yen, euro, Chinese yuan and pound sterling to increase volumes on its platform. So far, only rupee-dollar futures trading is allowed. Moving towards full convertibility of the rupee, the Reserve Bank of India and the country’s finance ministry are working on freeing the restrictions on trade in financial derivatives such as interest rate futures and credit default swaps. “After this, we need to revitalize the exchange-traded interest rates derivatives market, we need to offer exchange-traded credit derivatives, and we need to strengthen the corporate bond market,” Union finance minister P. Chidambaram had said during the 29 August launch of currency futures trading. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:00 pm B-schools to woo employers harderNew Delhi: With investment banks out of the picture, now’s your shot. It’s the pitch many of India’s top business schools (B-schools) plan to make to firms that have stayed away from their campuses over the last few years. After years of double-digit hires from companies such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch and Co., placement officials are reacting to the gloomy economic outlook, and trying to innovate. Also Read From talking to foreign firms in other emerging markets to courting start-ups and smaller outfits, B-schools are looking beyond the usual recruiters to place this year’s crop of students into jobs. The percentage of students placed—and where, and how much they earn—plays a big role in how B-schools are ranked by candidates. Amid an explosion of opportunities in the past few years, elite schools, such as the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), have actually turned away recruiters. Firms hungry for talent jockeyed to get on campus as early as possible, giving way to peculiar semantics as two “Day Zeros”, the prime first-day recruiting spot given to financial services companies, investment banks and consulting firms in the last few years. Also See TAPPING SOURCE (Graphic) Thus, job placements at B-schools became a barometer for hot and growing sectors in the Indian and global economies. Once upon a time, everyone flocked to IT. Then financial services heavyweights became the employer of choice. Last year brought a smattering of retail, real estate, logistics and infrastructure hires. Nobody seems to know what the next placements season will look like—students with work experience will begin interviews as early as next month—so coordinators are doing their best to cushion the blow of a slowing economy. At the IIMs, for example, Lehman Brothers used to be a top pick among students. This week, Lehman announced it expects a third-quarter loss of $3.9 billion (Rs17,862 crore) and began actively shopping for a potential buyer. “The reality is, there is a global downturn,” says Sourav Mukherji, who heads placements at IIM Bangalore (IIM-B), “and also the reality is, we are seeing an impact in India.” Mukherji and other placement officials say they don’t expect any company to skip out on a campus visit entirely, but many expect big employers to scale back their annual recruitments. IIM-B, for example, usually invites around 100 of the 500 companies that request a slot at placements to come and speak to the students. This year, Mukherji says, he will probably bring 150 to Bangalore. “We are working harder to get other kinds of companies,” he says. For example, he says, marketing firms will be high on their list. “We’ll say, ‘this is the time to get a good bunch of students.’” Although the main placement season comes into focus only in November and December, B-schools are making similar proactive moves. Aruna Bedi, who heads placements at IILM Institute of Higher Education in Gurgaon near Delhi, says it’s too early to make specific predictions, but that IILM is talking to business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing shops that haven’t taken many students in previous years, and is looking at other avenues for employment. “Some companies have said we are currently freezing” hiring, she says, “we are going to the international placement market for the first time this year”. Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business’ placement head V.K. Menon says the school has recruiters coming in from Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai, as well as from domestic industries such as real estate, media and health care that haven’t traditionally recruited from campus, to function as a hedge against the global slowdown. “Take Dubai, for example,” Menon says, “there is so much financial activity there, while the subprime (crisis) is in the US. Some markets are hit, but some are in growth.” At the Faculty of Management Studies in the Capital, placements director Madhu Vig says she is looking at bringing more marketing and consumer goods companies to campus to shore up against any downturn in the traditional financial recruiters. “We do not have any cause for worry at this point,” Vig says, “but we are trying to hedge our risk, and get a bigger number of companies in our kitty.” Other schools are even looking at different divisions within financial companies. “Investment banking is slowing down,” says Jeevan Kumar R., who handles placements at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, “but (banks) are expanding their markets and brokerage divisions, so we are looking to compensate numbers from that.” Executives also expect the technology sector slowdown to affect business school placements, though not as dramatically as the tumult in the banking industry might. Tech companies, which have reigned in engineering campus recruitments in recent months, plan to also put the brakes on business school hiring. The Indian operations of US tech firm, Keane Inc., for example, only visited 60% of its usual business school campuses for the 2008 recruitment season, and expects similar numbers for the next year, according to S.G. Raja Sekharan, senior vice-president of Keane India. But the expected slowdown might not be a bad thing for all management students. “Everyone here thinks they should become an i-banker, or a consultant,” says IIM Bangalore’s Mukherji. “I don’t explicitly persuade students to come to different industries,” he says, “but one of my purposes (is to make them) be realistic, and assess their own competence.” Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 7:00 pm Eicher-Volvo JV to launch new vehiclesMumbai: Ajoint venture between Eicher Motors Ltd and Swedish truck maker Volvo AB plans to launch two new heavy-duty commercial vehicles in two years, a top official of Eicher Motors said. The joint venture, called VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV), includes Eicher’s commercial vehicles business along with its engineering components and engineering solutions businesses, besides Volvo’s India truck sales and distribution network. “We are in the process of development and hope to launch that in the next fiscal year,” Eicher Motors managing director Siddhartha Lal said in an interview late on Thursday. The JV plans to introduce a new 6x4 tipper and a 6x4 tractor trailer within 18-24 months, he said. “But this would be in addition to making variants of existing models and also improving on them,” Lal added. Eicher Motors, which lags rivals Tata Motors Ltd and Ashok Leyland Ltd in sales, currently holds about 2.5% share in the heavy-duty market, Lal said. “Two players command over 90% share in India in the heavy-duty market... We want that to change.” In VECV, Eicher products will continue to be manufactured at its Pithampur plant in Madhya Pradesh. The plant has a capacity of 180 vehicles a day. “We are planning to increase capacity so as to be able to roll out as many as 300 vehicles by the end of three years,” Lal said. In addition to VECV, which is a step-down subsidiary of the company, Eicher is now left with its Royal Enfield motorbike division. Eicher Motors is coming up with two new Royal Enfield models aimed at the international markets, Lal said. The first is scheduled to be launched in October, and the second by December. The firm was also exploring new avenues to invest in but was yet to home in on one, Lal said. “But the investments will not be in the area of commercial vehicles as we do not plan to compete with our JV.” The joint venture will also leverage Volvo’s global distribution network to export the Eicher brand of vehicles to developing countries. “The idea is to compete against developing market players with the Eicher product range and expanded distribution network,” he added. Lal said talks were also on with Volvo to bring the Swedish firm’s commercial finance business to India through the JV. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:56 pm When somebody’s watching youIt had to be one of the strangest moments ever on Indian television. Sanjay Nirupam, Mumbai’s original moral policeman and once staunch defender of Bal Thackeray, a Shiv Sainik-turned-Congressman, dressed in a starched white kurta-pyjama and Nehru jacket, hands behind his back, being escorted by Rahul Mahajan, one-time alleged drug abuser and brief inmate of Tihar jail, son of the late politician Pramod Mahajan.  Shocking: Goody was diagnosed with cancer and left Bigg Boss 2 after we went to press. Photograph: Punit Paranjpe / Reuters “This one is Indian-style, that one is Western-style. There are no cameras in the bathrooms,” said Rahul, reassuring Nirupam, who by then had met all the inadequately dressed women in the Bigg Boss 2 house and was probably calculating how many days it would take him to convince them to cover up. I’m already hooked. By now you know that actor Shilpa Shetty has replaced Arshad Warsi as host of the second season of India’s favourite reality show (“Hello India!” she said, to emphasize her global citizen status). So what if Warsi was cooler, he can’t carry off a Manish Malhotra sari the colour of the British flag; and he certainly can’t compete on waist-to-hip-curve ratio. Indian women are going to closely track what (and how) Shetty wears on this show. Already, in the first episode, she tucked in her sari pallu firmly so her back was fully exposed and she tossed her freshly-streaked hair around often enough so we could notice the jewelled clasp that held her blouse together. It didn’t bother me that Shetty repeated herself. “What is your game plan?” she asked all the participants as she introduced them. All of them, except two, said they wanted to have fun and just be themselves. Jade Goody, Shetty’s infamous tormentor who was voted off the UK version of the same show for her racist remarks about the Indian actor, understandably, didn’t use that line. “I’ve changed for the better. The people of India have seen only a small amount of me, I want them to see there's more to me,” Goody said. “I'm a businesswoman, I'm a mother, I can't be that bad.” It’s not going to be easy for Goody — she can’t understand Hindi and there’s more chance of the participants mocking her Essex accent on this show. The organizers have ensured that Goody doesn’t get voted out in the first week as she is an “international guest” — who has been paid a lot of money to appear on this show. Nirupam, the other contestant with a higher goal, wants to show India that politicians are normal people too. So, in short, there’s a holier-than-thou politician, a loser/divorced son of a late politician, an item girl who the loser is rumoured to be dating, a cleanliness freak/mother hen from the saas-bahu world, a drunk/easily angered ex of another saas-bahu type, a gangster’s moll, an Englishwoman with an unpleasant track record, another (hot tempered) item girl, better known as the Helen of Bhojpuri films (because she danced to Mehbooba in the Bhojpuri version of Sholay), a (divorced/separated) television actress we had all forgotten about, a model, a comedian, a singer, a winner of MTV Roadies (here mainly because of his cooking skills, I think) and an ordinary Mumbai girl who acquired an accent when she studied in the UK. It boggles the mind to think what will happen when all these people, trapped in the same house, focus on being themselves. They could begin by comparing criminal records, sharing notes about failed marriages and exchanging spouse-abuse stories. The men’s bedroom (which is separated from the women’s bedroom only by a glass partition) is a especially scary indicator of the state of the Indian male. Last year, we spent hours watching bitchy men and women engage in petty fights; this year, who knows, there could be some serious violence. I know I’m tuning in to Bigg Boss 2 at 10pm on Colors every night. PS: Last year’s winner, Rahul Roy, said he believed the gangster’s moll would win. He said she had the ability to handle anything because “she’s already been stripped of all her dignity in life”. Write to lounge@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:47 pm New art in GurgaonGurgaon is now home to the most innovative space for art in India.  Man With Cockerel II, 2004, by Ranbir Kaleka (This is one of Kaleka’s most famous video installations of a man catching and losing a cockerel. The artist says the piece revolves around “the one bit of us that we keep losing and fighting to recapture. It has quite a fulfilling meaning—anything that makes us complete, anything that we want to possess”. ) Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint The brick and rusted metal building provides a perfect frame for the works. The 35,000 sq. ft space, designed by Aniket Bhagwat, hosts art in the basement and the first two floors. Third-floor offices, for visiting curators and students, will be complete in another month. The finished space still has a rough, unfinished edge to it, allowing the works on display to dominate it. Most of the rooms have few windows or small slits, purposely darkened to accentuate the light emanating from many of the new media and video installation pieces that will often fill the museum. Artist Ranbir Kaleka says that Devi Art Foundation founder Anupam Poddar had many of the pieces in his home for some time and was, therefore, able to conceive a building that perfectly suits the requirements for housing contemporary art. Though the new not-for-profit contemporary art museum is far away from the heart of the city, the beauty and impact of the works on display more than make up for the long drive to Gurgaon. The inaugural show will run until November and is available for viewing by appointment every day of the week, except Monday. From November through January, the museum will exhibit pieces of the foundation’s permanent collection. And from February to April, Pakistani artist Rashid Rana will curate a show on the contemporary art of his country. While the exhibits inside will rotate, a series of permanent pieces will be displayed on the grounds, one of them being Subodh Gupta’s aluminium cast of an Ambassador car, and Sudarshan Shetty’s multimedia wall of 1,000 replicas of the Taj Mahal. We pick four stand-out pieces from the inaugural show. More Photos Remembering Toba Tek Singh, 1998, by Nalini Malani Malani’s new media installation featuring 15 video screens displays images of atom bomb clouds, women tying saris, women giving birth, and blue skies. It’s a conversation and warning, from a woman’s perspective, about the widening gap wrought by the nuclear stand-off between Pakistan and India. Untitled, 2007, by Shilpa Gupta The most whimsical piece in the show requires viewers to walk into a large room with a white screen against one wall. Their shadows, reflected on the white wall, are soon bogged down by a puppeteer’s string and accrued junk. The playfulness of the piece belies the serious questions inherent in the project about consumerism, the baggage we swamp ourselves with, and the inability to detach ourselves from worldly goods. The Mermaids Mirror, 2002, by Sheba Chhachhi A haunting meditation on femininity, the trap of success and the quality of time, Chhachhi’s Mermaids Mirror shows one second of a perfect image of screen legend Meena Kumari before distorting and blurring it on a row of glowing television screens (in reality, they’re modified cardboard boxes). Chhachhi says the project stems from the story of a mermaid’s mirror that never shows the true image, but always an obscured one, meant to be “insight through distortion”. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:46 pm Guns, gore and heartbreakThe same old villains Jason Bourne is up against a new enemy in his sixth outing—a Muslim terrorist group that was set up by the Nazis in the darkest days of World War II. “Heinrich Himmler…saw Islam as a masculine, war-like religion that featured certain key qualities in common with his SS philosophy, mainly blind obedience, the willingness for self-sacrifice, total lack of compassion for the enemy,” a character in The Bourne Sanction by Eric van Lustbader tells Bourne, who is biding his time as a professor of linguistics at an American university.  The verdict: Watch the movies rather than read the new Bourne book. Like all Bourne books, including the three Ludlum originals, this is a busy one, with fists, knives and guns brandished every few pages. The pace is good and you are carried by the flow of events. But the characters are flat, and the writing indifferent at times. A lot of Washington politics is also on offer as competing intelligence agencies try to grab territory from one another. But if you are ready to put aside the temptation to compare this novel with the Ludlum originals and blank out memories of the excellent films starring Matt Damon, The Bourne Sanction is worth a read on a lazy weekend. Time pass, as we say in India. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha LA stories Few authors have faced public humiliation like James Frey has. In 2006, Oprah Winfrey chose his 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces for her book club and after discovering that he had fabricated parts of it, took Frey to task on her show—asking him to explain why he lied about his life as a junkie in prison. Frey cringed—and became a household name in the US.  Bright Shiny Morning: By James Frey, Harper, 512 pages, Rs995. Even so, Frey’s novel—about a few lost souls in Los Angeles—is not as engrossing as his first. Bright Shiny Morning tries to be the great Los Angeles novel. About one-fifth of it consists of one-sentence facts about the city—for example, Los Angeles has a museum dedicated entirely to bananas. Every historical moment of LA, every demographic, every neighbourhood is tirelessly harped on. Do we really care? Los Angeles is the city of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski; it thrives on glamour, ambition and failed ambition; we’ve seen it in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. To his credit, Frey, too, begins with an interesting cast of characters: a young couple from Ohio who have come to escape the cruelty and small-mindedness of their families; a Mexican housekeeper struggling to find self-worth despite her white mistress’ prejudices; a vain, closeted movie star willing to do anything to get the man he loves; and many caricatures of the Beverly Hills and Skid Row milieu. Cliché collapses on cliché as the characters try to redeem themselves in the big, bad city. Frey’s prose is free of conventional syntax and punctuation, which is supposed to be an experiment, but which instead makes it a tiring, tough read. Sanjukta Sharma Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:43 pm ESPN-Star on a strong wicket in cricket broadcasting businessLeading sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports, a joint venture between Disney and Rupert Murdoch's Star, has overshadowed its rivals in terms of the number of cricket matches it has grabbed for the nextSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:42 pm Mamata-Buddhadeb talks collapse at second meetingTrinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee today spurned a new proposal placed by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, which entailed giving 70 acres inside the Tata Motors factory site.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:41 pm TPG Capital buys 49% in Shriram holding firmShriram Group and US-based TPG Capital, the global buyout arm of the leading global private equity investment firm, announced a definitive agreement in which TPG will invest up to $120 million (Rs 530Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:40 pm Golden handshake to cost JetLite Rs 5 croreValue-carrier JetLite, formerly full-service airline Air Sahara, which was bought by Naresh Goyal last year, will offer a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) to 750 employees who have been with theSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:39 pm Felicity Aston | Pole positionIn December 2009, a unique expedition will set out for the southern tip of the earth. Led by British adventurer Felicity Aston, 30, two teams of four women each will ski to the South Pole from two different points on the Antarctica coastline, reaching their destination around New Year’s Day 2010. Organized to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth in 2010, the expedition will have one woman each from eight Commonwealth countries—India, Cyprus, Ghana, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, New Zealand, Jamaica and the UK. Prior to announcing the names of Aparna Roy and Reena Kaushal Dharmshaktu as the two Indian finalists (one of them will join the Commonwealth Women’s Antarctic Expedition) at the British Council in New Delhi in August, Aston delivered an inspiring speech on her experience of spending two-and-a-half years in Antarctica as a member of the British Antarctic Survey, of being a part of the first all-woman team to successfully complete the 580km endurance race in the Canadian Arctic, and of leading a team of four women skiers across 1,100km in the Greenland ice-sheet in 31 days. Edited excerpts from an interview: How was the Commonwealth expedition conceived? After the successful expedition in Greenland in 2006, I wanted to do something with an all-woman team on a larger, more international scale. It was then that I thought of an expedition of women selected from the Commonwealth countries. It would bring attention to the organization, which in turn would provide a great platform for cross-cultural transfer of ideas. The year 2010 is the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth and also happens to be the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Why an all-woman team? So much of what I have done, right from studying physics in college, has been in areas seen as male bastions. In our team of 20 people who stayed in the Antarctic for two-and-a-half years, there were only two women. Outdoor expeditions are seen as masculine endeavours. In the UK, outdoor adventure programming on television is mostly an all-guy affair. There are women out there—climbers and mountaineers, who are pushing the boundaries—but we don’t hear about them or see them on television. Is there anything that makes an all-woman team different from all-male or mixed teams? There is a different atmosphere to an only-women team. They approach things differently. And, I think, there are some advantages. For one, they are more ready to admit that they are struggling. It is considered macho not to tell anyone if you are in some trouble. As the only girl in a team of men you are careful not to be seen as the weak link, and you act accordingly. But there are no such compulsions among women. During the Greenland expedition, at one point my feet had gotten so cold that they were hurting badly, but we still had the tent to put up. I just burst into tears. My teammate Rachel came over and hugged me. Then we just got on with the work at hand. I probably wouldn’t have cried if I was around men. How many women from India applied to be part of the expedition? There were 130 applicants. What surprised me was how many already had mountaineering experience, and also the age range—unlike in other countries, the applicants were not all young. Many candidates had inspiring CVs: Mamatha Lala, a doctor, works with HIV-positive children, and Smrithi Rai has made it her personal mission to save the endangered Pangolin. Another thing that struck me was the number of enquiries about the kind of food they would have to eat. Is India’s predominantly hot climate a disadvantage? That will become apparent when the two candidates we have short-listed come for training to Scandinavia. With modern clothing and equipment, it shouldn’t be a problem. And there will be a period of acclimatization. With temperatures in the Antarctic plunging to -30 degrees Celsius, everyone is in the same boat. Do such expeditions—to the Poles or across Siberia or Greenland—serve any purpose beyond thrill and adventure? Most people don’t know that Lake Baikal, where I went on an expedition, is the deepest and the oldest freshwater lake on the planet. For me, it was so interesting to interact with the people living there. It annoys me when people say that there is nothing left to explore. There is so much out there to explore and discover. Everywhere I go, I learn something new, and I feel that I come back a better person. To see and know what’s out there is a basic human need. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:38 pm Buddhadeb, Mamata talks on Singur land row break downThe Tata Nano land row remained unresolved with opposition Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and the West Bengal government failing to agree Friday evening on the acreage to be given to farmers to compensate for agricultural land 'forcibly' acquired for the small car project in Singur.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:32 pm Dharamsala to have food craft instituteHimachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal Friday said the central government had agreed in principle to set up a food craft institute at Dharamsala in the state.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:31 pm OPEC: Most club members are losersBrazil has declined to join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or Opec. The cartel’s production limits would hamper its plans to increase output. Russia, by contrast, wants extensive cooperation with Opec. Its declining production makes it interested in maximising short-term prices. Opec cartel membership appears politically driven, but in reality it’s for oil output losers. Click here for breakingviews.com  However, economic motivations are at least as important. Brazil has great hopes for its new offshore oil fields, and expects to expand oil production and seek new markets. The last thing it needs is restrictions on production. Russia has, conversely, failed to fulfil the potential of its oil reserves. With 12 of its 14 largest oilfields pre-dating the fall of the Soviet Union, it is now past the peak of its oil output. Hence it is taking greater control of its remaining energy assets, seeking to maximize their economic as well as political pay-off. While Russia probably cannot join Opec because of Saudi Arabian fears of losing control, coordinating with the cartel to maximize short-term oil prices makes economic sense. Assuming expanding oil producers such as Brazil continue to shun it, Opec will decline in importance in the years ahead and should lose its remaining ability to control prices by restricting supplies. Oil-consuming countries can help that process along by keeping a lid on their oil consumption and encouraging countries such as Brazil to stay out of Opec. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:09 pm IIP numbers signal soft landingThe stock market’s reaction to the better-than-expected July numbers for the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was strange, to say the least.  There’s no reason, though, why distress selling by FIIs should be limited to India. The fall in the shares of information technology companies, on concerns that their hedging strategies may have misfired, and the drop in the Reliance Industries Ltd shares, on worries about lower oil prices and refining margins, also helped push the Sensex down. Growth in capital goods production rose by a huge 21.9% in July, but that’s largely on account of a base effect—the index for capital goods fell sharply from 358.3 to 317.4 in July last year. But there has been no such base effect in consumer goods, where growth has been 7.3% year-on-year in July. Consumer durables production rose by 11.2%, which is surprising given the interest rate hikes, but then the increase has been on the back of negative growth in consumer durables in the year-ago period. Moreover, two-wheeler sales have started to pick up lately. The bottom line: while growth has been slowing, it still remains well-supported. For the market, that should imply a bottom is in place, unless distress selling by foreign investors continues. With the financial system in the West in a shambles, that could well happen. Click here to read Could this be the first time Infy misses its annual guidance? A look at the sector indices shows that the worst hit on Friday were IT, realty and banking stocks, the last two rate-sensitive sectors being dumped perhaps on fears that better-than-expected industrial production may be a mixed blessing. It’s true that demand pressures continue to be strong and they will get stronger with the money from the pay hike for government employees and as a result of a good monsoon. The latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data show that money supply (M3) growth is 21% year-on-year, far above the central bank’s target. Another hike in the cash reserve ratio could be called for. But with oil and commodity prices coming down, with inflation near to topping out and now with industrial growth better than in the first quarter, RBI’s attempt at a soft-landing for the economy seems to be on track. Cross-currency movements or slowdown worries? Till recently, Indian shareholders of IT stocks were content with the knowledge that an appreciation in the dollar versus the rupee was good news for their companies and vice-versa. CLSA Research’s client note released on Thursday night has now caused them to look closely at the movement of the dollar vis-a-vis other currencies such as the euro and the pound. The note says that Infosys Technologies Ltd is likely to miss the guidance it had given in dollar-terms, because of the sharp appreciation in the dollar against the euro and the pound. Also see Rupee Woes (Graphic) The Infosys stock was the second biggest loser among the National Stock Exchange’s Nifty stocks, losing 6.1% in value on Friday. But should Indian shareholders be so bothered about reported dollar numbers. After all, four-fifths of the company’s shares are issued in India and its main reporting currency is the rupee. In local currency terms, things look bright because of the sharp appreciation of the dollar. True, currencies in the faster growing European region have depreciated against the rupee, but the proportion of revenues collected in these currencies is still only 30%. The pre-dominance of dollar revenues will ensure Infosys will be a net gainer when numbers are reported in rupee terms. The company’s chief financial officer, V. Balakrishnan, says when the dollar depreciated sharply in the previous financial year, the markets were focused on rupee-based numbers. This year, when the opposite is happening, the focus has shifted to dollar-based growth. Are analysts being too finicky? That would be true if the only thing that’s impacting Infosys’s dollar-based numbers is the cross-currency movement. But as CLSA has pointed out, the more important question is: “What is the margin of safety with which Indian IT vendors are operating this year?” Infosys is known to be conservative with its guidance, which in other words means that it keeps a buffer or a margin of safety. If Infosys says it will grow revenues by 20%, the markets assume growth to be 22-23%. The margin of safety is this difference of 2-3%. As one veteran IT analyst puts it, cross currency movements and the like should be taken care of by this buffer. If, as CLSA estimates, the company cuts its guidance by two percentage points, it actually means that growth would fall by 4-5 percentage points. The company may cut its guidance because of cross-currency movements, but there’s no denying the fact that business fundamentals have deteriorated since it gave its guidance in April. Write to us at marktomarket@livemint.com Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 6:07 pm Macquarie’s ambitions hit NHAI roadblockNew Delhi: Macquarie Capital, the local unit of Sydney-based Macquarie Group Ltd, has run into trouble with highways regulator National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), after the latter asked the investment group to provide conclusive documentation on its control over firms it has shown as associates for all future projects. NHAI has refused to take into account the net worth and the technical expertise of these companies at the request for qualification (RFQ) stage.  Question time: Construction work on NH-58. Macquarie Capital is partnering Gammon Infrastructure to bid for more than 20 highway projects. Rajeev Dabral / Mint According to one NHAI official who didn’t want to be named, the documentation provided by Macquarie Capital for participation in highway projects was found to be inconclusive. It has therefore been asked to share more details on the companies under its control while bidding for projects in the future, he said. “The link between Macquarie Capital and these associates is not clear and therefore their experience cannot be factored in,” said this officer. A clause in RFQ document says that while computing the technical capacity and net worth of the applicant or consortium members, the respective net worth of associates would also be taken into account. Meanwhile, NHAI officials also say that Macquarie cannot submit additional papers once they have submitted them at the RFQ stage. “They cannot provide additional documentation once the papers have been submitted as part of the bidding process,” said this official. A senior executive with Macquarie Capital, who spoke to Mint requesting anonymity, would only say that discussions on the matter with NHAI were “under process”. Infrastructure expert with audit firm KPMG Arvind Mahajan said several international firms are facing similar problems in the domestic infrastructure space. “The problem in India is that the authorities overlook the objective behind the exercise of assessing these companies and instead focus on lesser aspects,” said Mahajan. Macquarie Capital is partnering Gammon Infrastructure Projects Ltd, or GIPL, to bid for more than 20 highway projects across the country. A GIPL executive said the issue is being sorted out by its partner. “This is only a temporary problem and we are sure of moving all our projects soon,” said this executive, asking not to be named. Another official with NHAI said: “They (Macquarie-Gammon venture) could not be shortlisted for several projects because they were beaten on points by other companies.” rahul.c@livemint.com Source: Home - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 5:59 pm Singur talks break downThe talks over the Nano land controversy between the West Bengal government and farmers' groups led by the Trinamool Congress collapsed Friday evening, with opposition leader Mamata Banerjee walking out of the talks, claiming that while the farmers demanded return of 400 acres of farmland 'forcibly' taken over for the project, the government was willing to give back only 70 acres.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:31 pm Government targets 2 mn tonne rice reserveThe government plans to create a two million tonne rice reserve on top of the 3 million tonne wheat emergency reserve created earlier this year to avoid any shortage, the agriculture minister said Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:31 pm TCS focusing on remote infrastructure managementAsia's largest software company Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) is focusing on remote infrastructure management (RIM) and expanding the segment by hiring new hands, said a company official Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:31 pm TPG Capital to acquire 26.7 percent in finance firmThe city-based Shriram Group and TPG Capital, a global private equity investment firm, Friday announced an agreement in which TPG will make an investment of up to $120 million (Rs.5.30 billion) to acquire 49 percent in Shriram Retail Holdings Private Limited (SRHPL).Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:30 pm C-DAC ties up with Electronic Corporation of Tamil NaduThe Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT) to undertake research in the areas including open source software and e-governance.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:30 pm High pricing dampen iPhone hype in IndiaNew Delhi: Apple Inc’s much-hyped iPhone 3G, launched in India on 22 August by Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone-Essar Ltd, has failed to make an impact. Some analysts, and those who had been hoping to buy the phone, say its high price and the absence of so-called third generation mobile-phone services in the country deterred potential buyers. The price of the Internet-connected multimedia phone -- Rs 36,100 for 16 GB and Rs31, 000 for 8 GB -- was higher than what potential customers had been expecting, analysts said. In the US, an iPhone costs $199, or about Rs.9,000. “I was thinking of getting one but when the prices were announced I felt that it was not worth paying that amount,” said Tarun Pall, 29, a management consultant with IBM India in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. “You get all the features at half the price (in other brands).. the other brands may not look good, but they aren’t bad either.” The absence of a 3G network, which enables high-speed data transfer, Internet browsing and video calls, and the price also put off Bangalore-based entrepreneur Shreyas Srinivasan, who says he would prefer the iPod Touch that resembles the iPhone. “Compared with an iPod touch, paying for an iPhone is a huge premium, and that’s not worth it,” he said. New Delhi-based telecom analyst N Kumar, who was hoping to buy the iPhone, said he chose not to go ahead after the price was announced. “Features such as video recording and cut-paste options are also lacking. Moreover, there is no 3G in India, and I do not know how long it (3G services) will be (before it is) successfully operationalised in India.” He is waiting for the launch of the Nokia N96, the Finnish company’s answer to the iPhone. “The only difference is the music, but I think N96 will be better priced,” Kumar said. Customers for the iPhone would be limited at the price at which it is being offered by Bharti and Vodafone, said another telecom analyst. ”There are people who go behind new technology and new devices and get it as they feel empowered by having such gadgets. These consumers who prefer technologically advanced devices and replace handset quite often will be first to buy the iPhone,” said Anshul Gupta, an analyst at Gartner Inc. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 12 Sep 2008 | 4:07 pm India July industry output flags underlying strengthNEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's industrial output rose more than expected in July, driven by capital goods production, suggesting the economy was resilient enough to withstand another rate rise if inflation made more tightening necessary.Source: Reuters: Money News | 12 Sep 2008 | 2:23 pm
|
