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Sejal Architectural sees FY11 topline at Rs 300crIn an interview with CNBCTV18, Amrut S Gada, Chairman and Managing Director of Sejal Architectural Glass Ltd, spoke about his outlook for the company.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 8:36 am Xerox invites bid for $400500m IT deal: SourcesThe USD 22billion business process and document management company, Xerox Corporation has invited bids for a USD 400500 million information technology contract, reports CNBCTV18 quoting sources.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 8:25 am To get over of Rs 900cr via tower stake sale: TTMLMukund Govind Rajan, Managing Director of TTML, the company will see an inflow in excess of Rs 900 crore. We will use proceeds for debt repayment and network rollout.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 8:17 am Bharti applies for 3G spectrum bid, Rel Comm may followBharti Airtel has applied for thirdgeneration mobile spectrum bid in all of the country\'s 22 telecom zones, a spokesman for the leading mobile operator said on Thursday.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 7:46 am Aspen sells 50% in oncology JVs for $117 mAspen Pharmacare, Africa\'s biggest generic drugs maker, will sell its 50% stake in global oncology joint ventures to joint owner India\'s Strides Arcolab for USD 117 million.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 7:45 am Unitech considers demerger of noncore biz: SourcesIn a move to unlock value in the noncore business, Indias leading real estate developer, Unitech is considering to demerge the business, reports CNBCTV18 quoting sources. The demerged entity may include telecom, hotels as well as special economic zones (SEZs).Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 7:15 am Properties may generate Rs 200400cr revenue in 5 yrs: TCIThe Board of Directors of Transport Corporation of India approved the Scheme of Arrangement relating to the demerger of \"Real Estate Warehousing\" division of the Company with effect from April 01, 2010, subject to the requisite approvals.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 6:48 am Govt okays private firms in medical educationThe government has allowed privatesector healthcare companies to start medical colleges in a move to help ease a shortage of seats, the Financial Express reported on Thursday.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am No plans to raise money via QIP now: HDILSarang Wadhawan, Managing Director of Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL), said the company has not raised any money so far and the QIP book has not been opened.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 5:45 am RenaultNissan inaugurates its new plant in ChennaiAutomaker Renault Nissan\'s CEO Carlos Ghosn inaugurated a new plant in Chennai yesterday, which ramps up the company\'s capacity in India quite dramatically.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 5:24 am Bharti applies for 3G mobile spectrum bidThe government will auction three slots each of third-generation wireless spectrum in most of its telecoms zones, including the lucrative Delhi and Mumbai regions, from April 9.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:59 am India to attain 9% GDP growth at real level: Edelweiss - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:55 am BMW to up Chennai plant capacity, eyes 4000 units sales in '10 - Economic Times
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:41 am To get over Rs 900cr via tower stake sale: TTML - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:41 am Greek worries rattle euro, world stocks dipLONDON (Reuters) - World stocks slipped back from recent closing highs on Thursday and the euro fell half a percent against the dollar on worries about Greece not receiving European Union aid.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:28 am China Mobile beats estimates on strong data servicesHONG KONG (Reuters) - China Mobile is starting to benefit from its years of investment in non-voice services, helping the world's largest mobile carrier by subscribers to report an unexpected rise in revenue per user.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:26 am Teva to win Ratiopharm auction - sourcesFRANKFURT (Reuters) - Israel's Teva has won the battle for German generic drugmaker Ratiopharm, agreeing to pay more than 3.5 billion euros ($4.8 billion) including debt, three sources close to the situation told Reuters.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:25 am INTERVIEW - Gayatri Proj to divest stake in power unitMUMBAI (Reuters) - Gayatri Projects will dilute 49 percent stake in its 1,320 MW power project unit to a strategic partner in next two months and hopes to tie up the debt component for this by March end, a top official said.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:16 am India gold buying remains slack; price declines eyedMUMBAI (Reuters) - India gold buying remained slack for a second day in a row on Thursday afternoon as traders waited for price dips to stock up for the wedding season, and a weaker rupee also weighed on sentiment, dealers said.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:10 am Uttarakhand raises gender budget for women empowermentThe state government has earmarked Rs1417.75 crore for gender budget, meant for women empowerment through various schemes.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:03 am Gold buying remains slack; price declines eyedMumbai: India gold buying remained slack for a second day in a row on Thursday afternoon as traders waited for price dips to stock up for the wedding season, and a weaker rupee also weighed on sentiment, dealers said. “Demand is not good, it is lacklustre like yesterday, traders may be holding on their positions as they anticipate a fall below $1,100 an ounce levels,” said a dealer with a Mumbai-based state-run bank, which deals in bullion. International gold, which guides the domestic markets, was trading $1,121.10/1,121.90 an ounce as against the previous close of $1,124.05/1,126.05 an ounce. Local gold prices traded steady, tracking the international market and the weak currency, which makes the dollar-quoted asset expensive. “The last time we saw good demand was on late Friday and early Monday in between $1,100-1,110,” said another dealer with a private bullion dealing bank. Overseas gold prices slipped on Thursday as the US dollar strengthened against other currencies, while there were concerns that a failure to sustain recent highs could prompt some investors to shift their money to stocks or bonds. The Indian rupee extended its fall in late morning trade tracking losses in the domestic sharemarket while overnight gains in the dollar versus majors continued to weigh. India’s wedding season starts in April. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:02 am Food price inflation eases; rate rise still seenNEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's food price inflation eased for the second straight week in early March but fuel inflation rose, maintaining the case for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to raise borrowing rates at its April policy review.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am No wheat exports: Sharad Pawar - The Hindu
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:53 am Japan corp mood up; talk of govt stimulus weighsTOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese companies have become far less gloomy about economic conditions than three months ago, a Reuters corporate survey showed, pointing to a big improvement in the Bank of Japan's closely watched tankan survey next month.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:50 am India asks US to support Doha talks for global trade pact - Hindustan Times
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:48 am Headley to plead guilty, India suspects FBI handChicago: Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, charged with conspiring in the Mumbai terror attacks, is set to plead guilty before a US court in an apparent bid to bargain for a lighter sentence and escape death penalty. 49-year-old Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October last year, has moved a plea bargain at a court here which will come up for hearing late on Thursday night before US district judge Harry Leinenweber. Headley, an LeT operative who had pleaded not guilty to the 12-count superseding indictment filed against him on 14 January, had Wednesday moved for a “change of plea”. A Chicago resident, Headley faces six counts of conspiracy involving bombing public places in India, murdering and maiming persons in India and providing material support to foreign terrorist plots and LeT; and six counts of aiding and abetting the murder of US citizens in India. He is also charged with plotting attacks against a Danish newspaper which published a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad. Indian security establishment feel if Headley is awarded lesser sentence, it would lend credence to suspicions that he may have been a double agent, working for both American agencies and LeT. Indian officials, who have been watching the progress in the case at Chicago, is somewhat worried about reports emanating from there that Headley would be pleading guilty in an attempt to get a lighter sentence. As Headley prepared to change his plea to guilty, media here said he may be bargaining for life in prison. “...with prosecutors having the cooperation of a man inside the conspiracy that allegedly carried out the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai,” a Chicago public radio report said. “These co-conspirators do not tape record what they are doing internally so there is no real way to find out what happened inside these secretive associations unless you get somebody who is inside to cooperate with you,” it said. ABC7News termed it as a “triumph for federal terrorism prosecutors”. “In a triumph for federal terrorism prosecutors in Chicago, accused Mumbai attack planner David Coleman Headley will plead guilty. The change of plea comes five months after Headley, an American-Islamic fundamentalist, was arrested at his Chicago home by the FBI,” it said in a report. The report further said the guilty plea “comes as a blow to the defence of accused co-conspirator Tahawwur Hussain Rana”, who was arrested and charged a few weeks after Headley. “Their alleged partnership is odd and was born out of Muslim extremism,” it added. The ‘Chicago SunTimes´ said some of Headley’s cooperation laid the groundwork for an indictment against Pakistani-Canadian Rana, who ran an immigration business in the city that was used as a cover for Headley’s trips to India. If convicted, Headley faces maximum death penalty. John Theis, Headley’s lawyer, said his client will plead guilty, but declined to comment on whether he would do so to all the charges against him. The American terror suspect had got away with a lesser sentence after he was arrested in 1998 for smuggling heroin into the US from Pakistan as he cooperated with the investigation in the case. He was sentenced to less than two years in prison and thereafter went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:33 am Food inflation falls to 16.3%New Delhi: India’s food price inflation eased for the second straight week in early March but fuel inflation rose, maintaining the case for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to raise borrowing rates at its April policy review. Analysts said headline wholesale price inflation (WPI) would cross into the double digits by March before retreating over the next few months, but a pick-up in economic growth would keep WPI at high levels for the rest of the year. Steepening inflation has seen markets pricing in a 25 to 50 basis point interest rate hike in April. Bond yields were steady on Thursday as the latest data did little to change those expectations. “It (WPI) should peak towards the middle of the year and come off a little bit towards the end of the year, but still be high,” said Brian Jackson, an emerging-market economist with the Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong. “You’re still getting some pressure from the fiscal side on total demand, and that sort of highlights that current policy rates are not appropriate given where we are.” Data released on Thursday showed the food price index rose 16.30% in the year to 6 March, lower than an annual rise of 17.81% in the previous week. It was the second straight weekly easing of food price inflation and analysts expected the trend to continue, echoing policymakers’ comments that high inflation was due to supply shortages and would cool off as the new, winter-sown harvest reached the market. The fuel price index rose 12.68% in the year to 6 March, up from an annual rise of 11.38% in the previous week. The government had hiked state-set motor fuel prices at the end of February. Key policymakers have said headline inflation would ease over the next two months, after the finance minister said it could top 10% in March following a reading of 9.89% in February. But in a sign the government was giving the green light to a rate hike, a top policy adviser said the RBI ought to carefully consider a return to a normal monetary policy. Government officials have had until recently called for the RBI to ensure any possible rate hike does not put the country’s economic recovery at risk. The central bank has to balance managing the government’s record $100 billion borrowing plan for the 2010-11 fiscal year with supporting growth and taming inflation. Rising prices have sparked opposition-backed street protests and made the government reluctant to push through reforms such as relaxing fuel price controls, even though the ruling Congress party faces no risk of losing power anytime soon. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:30 am Bharti applies for 3G spectrum bid, Rel Comm may follow - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:27 am India asks US to support Doha talks for global trade pactIndia has asked the US to lend support to the WTO negotiations for reaching a global trade-opening deal, considered important to revive the world commerce that contracted last year.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:26 am Lehman receives OK to delay disclosure statementJudge James Peck approved Lehman's request for a delay at a hearing in US bankruptcy court in Manhattan on Wednesday.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:25 am Bharti applies for 3G mobile spectrum bidNew Delhi: Bharti Airtel on Thursday submitted its bid for 3G spectrum, auction for which starts from 9 April. According to the schedule, Friday is the last day for putting in applications to participate in the auction. No. 2 operator Reliance Communications also said it would shortly apply to bid for the spectrum in all the zones. The government is selling three slot of spectrum across the nation with the exception of a few states where four slots will be on offer. The reserve price for pan-India spectrum has been fixed at Rs3,500 crore. According to the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for 3G spectrum auction, of the 22 circles only five states -- Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir -- will have four private players. The 3G mobile services will allow high-speed content download and broadband services. When contacted, Bharti officials confirmed that an application has been put in for participating in the forthcoming 3G spectrum auction. The successful bidders would be allowed to offer 3G services on commercial basis from 1 September 2010. The auction of spectrum has been postponed several times as among other things there was indecisiveness over the availability of spectrum and the number of operators to be allowed in each circle. The department of telecom (DoT) was at loggerheads with the defence ministry over the latter’s reluctance to vacate the designated spectrum (air waves) for commercial use. As per DoT’s schedule, last date for submission of applications is 19 March. The mock auction will take place on 5 April and 6, followed by the final auction on 9 April 2010. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:13 am Govt borrowing to be helped by short-term bond issuesMUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), tasked with managing record government borrowing, could resort to more short-term and floating rate bonds in the new fiscal year, while it raises interest rates to tame inflation.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 2:11 am Nokia to launch its music service in India in couple of monthsIn order to fight piracy, Nokia plans to launch its music service 'Comes With Music' in India in a couple of months to give unlimited music access to its consumers, a top company official said.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:58 am Bharti Airtel bids for 3G spectrumCountry's largest private telecom firm Bharti Airtel on Thursday submitted its bid for 3G spectrum, auction for which starts from April 9. According to the schedule, Friday is the last day for putting in applications to participate in the auction. Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:52 am Bharti applies for 3G mobile spectrum bidNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel has applied for third-generation mobile spectrum bid in all of the country's 22 telecom zones, a spokesman for the leading mobile operator said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:52 am China orders safety checks on Boeing 737sChina has ordered its airlines to make safety checks on more than 400 aircraft made by US giant Boeing due to concerns over possible problems with tail flaps, state media reported on Thursday.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:48 am Nifty hovers near 5250; SAIL, Axis Bank gain - Economic Times
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:41 am India committed to take Doha to successful conclusion: SharmaNew Delhi is fully committed to take the Doha round of trade negotiations to a successful conclusion, Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has said.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:38 am United Bank expects Rs5.5 billion capital by March-end'We have asked for 550 crores (Rs5.5 billion) from government and hope to get it before the end of this fiscal,' chairman and managing director Bhaskar Sen said on Thursday.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:28 am South Africa's Cipla lifts FY profit, to add cancer drugsCipla Medpro, which rebuffed rival Adcock Ingram's 2.1 billion rand takeover bid last year, said on Thursday headline earnings per share rose to 36.6 cents compared with 29.1 cents in the previous year.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:20 am UK to give £360 million loan guarantee for FordUK's support for Nissan and Ford follows last week's announcement of a 300 million loan guarantee for General Motors' European arm to secure the company's operations in Britain and the rest of Europe.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:19 am Fuel inflation accelerates, food inflation easesData released on Thursday showed the food price index rose 16.30% in the year to March 6, lower than an annual rise of 17.81% in the previous week, continuing a downward trend for the second straight week.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:17 am Food inflation eases, but fuel prices keep up pressureFood inflation fell to 16.30 per cent for the week ended March 6 on easing prices of pulses and vegetables, but fuel inflation shot up to 12.68 per cent. For the previous week, food inflation was at 17.81 per cent and fuel inflation at 11.38 per cent.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:17 am Fuel inflation accelerates, food inflation eases - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:16 am Food inflation eases, but fuel prices keep up pressureFood inflation fell to 16.30 per cent for the week ended March 6 on easing prices of pulses and vegetables, but fuel inflation shot up to 12.68 per centSource: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:16 am United Bank expects Rs 550 crore capital by March-end - Moneycontrol.com
Source: Business - Google News | 18 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am Pawar rules out wheat exports, favours stepping up allocationSharad Pawar on Thursday ruled out exporting surplus wheat lying in the godowns to reduce the stock and instead favoured stepping up allocation to Above Poverty Line (APL) families.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:59 am UBI in talks with ARC to sell Rs 100 cr worth bad loansMumbai: United Bank of India is negotiating with a clutch of asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) to sell bad loans worth Rs100 crore for cleaning up its loan book, a senior bank official today said. The bank plans to sell off Rs100 crore of its bad loans by end-March and has already sold Rs200 crore worth bad assets so far in this fiscal, UBI executive director T M Bhasin told reporters at the bank’s listing ceremony here. “We have received bids from ARCs to sell our bad assets. We are currently evaluating bids and expect to sell Rs100 crore-worth bad loans by the end of this month,” he said. The decision to sell off bad loans is part of restructuring the bank’s advance portfolio and also reduce the non-performing assets burden, Bhasin said, without outlining the segments which have incurred most of the losses. Kolkata-based UBI has a gross NPA level of 2.4%, while its net NPAs stands at 1.21%. This is slightly higher than its peers. United Bank currently has a loan book of Rs43,000 crore, while its total deposit base stands at around Rs67,000 crore. UBI today got listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange with a 17% premium at Rs77 against an issue price of Rs66 per share. On NSE, the shares were listed at Rs74.9, a premium of 13.48%. With UBI going public, Punjab and Sindh Bank is the only unlisted public sector lender now. Central Bank of India was the last PSU bank to get listed. To purge their balance sheets by this fiscal-end, many banks either opted for one-time settlement of their defaulted advances or sold them off to ARCs. NPA levels started rising in the system, particularly in the last one year, post the financial crisis that hit many businesses and resulted in job losses. Top bankers, including State Bank of India chairman, O P Bhatt had recently indicated that the slippages are likely to rise in the coming months and a substantial economic recovery is yet to take place. However, rating agency Crisil had recently said that the pace of rise of NPAs is likely to slow down in the approaching months as companies are now in a better position to repay their loans. The agency, which projected that gross NPAs in the system would grow to 5% of the total assets by end-FY11 now expects the ratio to be around 4.5%. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:42 am Sensex set to rise 11% by end-2010: pollMumbai: The BSE Sensex was set for solid gains in 2010, driven by earnings optimism and supported by robust economic growth, albeit at a slower rate than last year, a Reuters poll found. The 30-share BSE Sensex was seen rising 3.6% by mid-year and by nearly 11% by end-2010 from Tuesday’s close at 17,383, according to the median forecast of 20 brokerages and investment houses. The benchmark was expected to rise to 18,000 points by end-June and end 2010 at 19,250. Forecasts ranged from 13,800-21,500. The year-end figure was up from 19,000 in a December poll. “Earnings growth will clearly be a driver for the market this year,” said Manish Sonthalia, fund manager of portfolio management services at Motilal Oswal, who expects the Sensex to touch 19,000 by end the of the year. Asia’s third-largest economy will expand by more than 7.2% in the year to March 2010, with growth accelerating to 8.5% in 2010-11 and 9% in 2011-12, according to government forecasts. The Mumbai benchmark stock index rose 81% last year after the economy was spared the worst of the global economic downturn, with foreign investors pumping in $17.5 billion. “If global cues disappoint, foreign inflows into our country will be hurt, and in turn impact our market,” said Arun Kejriwal, director of research firm KRIS. ”If we have more cases like Dubai and Greece, it could clearly hurt the risk appetite globally.” Market participants broadly expected financial and capital goods companies to drive the market higher in 2010. Banking stocks were widely expected to outperform the main index on improving credit offtake in an advancing economy. ”When an economy is moving ahead, banks’ advances are bound to grow. The growth of the banking sector is inevitable in a growing economy like ours,” said R.K. Gupta, managing director of Taurus Mutual Fund. The outlook for makers of machinery and factory equipment is positive, analysts said, after the capital goods segment within industrial output rose 56.2 percent in January, from 15.9 percent growth a year earlier. The BSE index trades at 16.3 times forward earnings, lagging China’s Shanghai Composite Index, which trades at 16.5 times. The benchmarks in Brazil and Russia trade at 12.8 times and 6.7 times respectively. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:38 am Toyota faces criminal charges in CanadaToyota may be slapped with criminal charges in Canada for hiding accelerator problems from motorists even as it was trying to fix it.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:36 am Axis bank to expand operations in OrissaAxis bank, country's third largest private bank has planned to expand its operational base in Orissa.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:34 am UBI in talks with ARCs to sell Rs 100-crore worth bad loansState-owned, United Bank of India is negotiating with a clutch of asset reconstruction companies to sell a part of its bad loans with a view to clean up its loan book, a top bank official said.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:10 am Coal piling up at east coast ports on rake shortageMore than three million tonnes (mt) of imported coal are awaiting evacuation at the east coast ports of Paradip, Visakhapatnam and Gangavaram due to non-availability of railwaySource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Day Trading GuideThe stock is nearing significant resistance around Rs 970. Initiate fresh short position only if the stock reverses from this resistance level with tightSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am India, Britain get the thumbs up from Goldman Economics chiefIndia's target of achieving double digit growth this decade is more conceivable than ever before, according to Mr Jim O'Neill, Head of Global Economics at GoldmanSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Railways hikes freight for iron ore exportsThe Railways' freight for iron ore for exports is up by Rs 300 a tonne from today (Wednesday). The Railway Board has hiked the distance-based surcharge on iron ore for other than domesticSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Commercial vehicles' lenders bet on growthSales of commercial vehicles, that barometer of an economy's fortunes, have been robust in the past few months. For the 11-month period ended February 2010, sales of commercial vehicles have grown by 35 perSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Deep Industries (Rs 108.9): BuyDeep Industries has been extremely volatile this year, plunging to Rs 92.05 in the pre-Budget session and then recording a smart rally to Rs 121. The recent correction in the stock since the March 8 peak is halting just above the support zoneSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am 15 cos under lens for FEMA violations in GoaRussians and UK citizens head the list of foreigners using the company route to circumvent the ban on their acquiring agricultural land in Goa, an on-going official investigationSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Central Bank plans to use postmen to reach rural areasCentral Bank of India is in talks with India Post to rope in village postmen as business correspondents (BCs), its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr S. Sridhar, hasSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Domestic savings to support higher growth: EdelweissIndia has the potential to grow at 9 per cent by 2020, supported by domestic savings itself, according to an Edelweiss research report “India 2020-Seeing Beyond” released onSource: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am Qualcomm submits bid for broadband spectrumThe US-based Qualcomm Incorporated has submitted to the Department of Telecom its application to bid for the upcoming auction for broadband wireless access (BWA)Source: Business Line - Home Page | 18 Mar 2010 | 12:00 am PayPal ties up with Chinese partner: reportPayPal, the online payment platform of US e-commerce giant eBay, will tie up with a Chinese partner to allow consumers in China to buy from overseas merchants, according to a report.Source: HindustanTimes.com - Top Business News Headlines | 17 Mar 2010 | 11:59 pm Govt OKs private firms in medical educationMumbai: The government has allowed private-sector healthcare companies to start medical colleges in a move to help ease a shortage of seats, the Financial Express reported on Thursday. The Medical Council of India (MCI), a state body that regulates the sector and registers doctors, has allowed hospital chains such as Fortis Healthcare, Max Healthcare and Apollo Hospitals to set up medical colleges, the newspaper said, quoting an official notification. Only state-run bodies, universities and private religious or charitable trusts were allowed to start medical colleges until now. The MCI has also relaxed the land requirement norms for companies planning to set up medical colleges in large cities, the paper said. India currently has an acute shortage of seats in medical education. Hundreds of medical graduates go overseas to pursue higher education as current capacity was hardly about 13,500 post-graduate medical seats. Earlier this week, the Cabinet approved a proposal to allow foreign universities to set up local campuses, part of long-standing plan to reform the education sector. The move is expected to reduce the flow of Indian students abroad, with tens of thousands of students heading to universities in the United States, Britain and Australia every year. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 11:42 pm Markets edge lower; Infosys at all-time highMumbai: Indian shares were trading marginally lower on Thursday morning, facing resistance after having gained more than 6 percent so far in March, and as Asian stocks dropped slightly. Top engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro dropped 1%, after rising 4.5% over 2 previous sessions. Cigarette-to-hotel business ITC was 0.9% lower, after having gained 7.5% in eight earlier sessions. By 10:59am, the 30-share BSE Index was trading down 0.12% at 17,468.82, with 17 of its components declining. The 50-share NSE index was down 0.1% at 5,228.50. “There is resistance coming in as we move close to highs we saw in January. There is no clear sectoral trend today,” said Kunal Sukhani, manager of institutional equities at Asian Markets Securities. In January, the main index had risen to its highest level since February 2008. “However, the overall scenario is positive and expectations are that fourth-quarter earnings should be good,” added Sukhani. Foreign funds have poured in around $2.8 billion in Indian equities since the start of this month to March 16, data from markets regulator showed, and a part of this was absorbed by issuances in the primary market. The benchmark Sensex is expected to rise to 18,000 points by end-June and end 2010 at 19,250, driven by earnings optimism and supported by robust economic growth, a Reuters poll found. IT bellwether Infosys Technologies led the gains and touched a record high of Rs2,777.50, as the stock was one of the best picks in the sector, dealers said. The stock pared some gains and was up 1.1% at Rs2,769.90. Mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp rose 0.6% to Rs2,743.20. In a note on Wednesday, BNP Paribas Securities said it expects strong loan growth and earnings momentum for HDFC in the fourth quarter. BNP Paribas has a “buy” rating on the stock and said it was a “defensive bet for a volatile market.” Energy giant Reliance Industries which has the highest weight on the Sensex, rose 0.3% to Rs1,069.70. Non-ferrous metals producer Sterlite Industries fell 1.5% as copper prices drifted lower. In the broader market, gainers almost equalled losers in a ratio in a volume of 139 million shares. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 11:38 pm Indian cinema looks to up game and hit foreign jackpotMumbai: Bad scripts, flimsy characters and poor-quality production are hindering Indian cinema as it attempts to capture new global audiences, leading industry figures say. Top actors, film-makers and executives said India needed to raise its game if it was to replicate the success of My Name Is Khan, which recently became the biggest Bollywood movie of all time on overseas revenue. The movie has taken $39 million worldwide since its release in February, including $17 million outside India, distributors Fox Star Studios said, hailing it as “Bollywood’s first truly global film.” Its success is now being seen as a possible model for “crossover” films, as Indian cinema looks to recover from a 14% decline in revenues to Rs89.3 billion (about $2 billion) in 2009. The overseas market -- which makes up 7% of India’s total film industry revenues -- fell 30% last year, hit by the economic downturn, poor-quality films and fewer releases after a strike by Bollywood producers. My Name Is Khan actor and co-producer Shah Rukh Khan said that increasing Hollywood involvement in India was key. The United States accounts for up to a third of Indian cinema’s overseas market and a number of US studios, including Warner Bros, Disney and DreamWorks, have struck deals with Indian production houses in recent years. “Bollywood is lagging very, very far behind in three areas,” Khan told a media and entertainment conference in Mumbai this week. Indian film-makers needed to understand the Hollywood format “and not adhere to our own stubborn narratives,” he said. “The sooner Indian film companies realise that screenplay writing is not an art form but a science, the faster our films will grow,” he said. Help was also needed to develop the special effects sector and bring the discipline and organisation that was “woefully lacking in the business of films,” he added. Indian cinema, particularly Hindi-language Bollywood, has a tradition of making highly stylised films involving set-piece song and dance routines, with some actors often working on up to half a dozen films at the same time. Some 242 Bollywood films were released in 2009, according to an industry report by auditors KPMG, but with few succeeding at the box office, even domestically, there have been calls to favour quality over quantity. Bollywood has been looking to diversify into more contemporary subjects in recent years but My Name Is Khan director Karan Johar said the current standard of home-grown script-writing was still “shoddy.” “We have the people, we have the infrastructure, we have the mobilisation but we don’t empower writing and that’s of paramount importance,” he said. Actor Irrfan Khan, who starred in the Oscar-winning hit Slumdog Millionaire and A Mighty Heart, called for greater depth and better production values. “I don’t think ‘Slumdog’ would have got the kind of mention it got if the post-production was done here India,” he said. “Our mainstream films are fantastic and have that unique quality of emotion. But our mainstream doesn’t welcome the complexities of life, it doesn’t welcome complex characters. We need to work on that.” Vijay Singh, chief executive of Fox Star Studios, which distributed Slumdog Millionaire, said seeking “crossover” hits did not mean compromising Indian films’ specific cultural and social themes. But better content, combined with targeted marketing and distribution, could help raise the profile of Indian cinema, its stars and wealth of backroom talent, he added. “These are early days for all of us. We have done the best that we can for My Name Is Khan,” Singh said. “Some of these new road maps that we have laid out will help Bollywood across the board.” Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 11:28 pm Rupee falls by 9 paise against USD in early tradeThe Indian rupee depreciated by 9 paise at 45.43 in early trade today as dollar gained overseas.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 10:46 pm Sensex rises by 54pts in early trade on global cuesThe wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty also rose by 14.30 points, or 0.27 per cent to 5,246.20 points.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 10:37 pm Sensex rises by 54 points in opening trade on global cuesThe 30-share index, which had gathered nearly 325 points in the past two sessions, rose by 53.99 points, or 0.30% to 17,544.07 points in the opening trade with all the sectoral indices trading in the positive zone.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 17 Mar 2010 | 10:22 pm US accounting watchdog sanctions Satyam's auditorsThe US accounting watchdog has imposed sanctions against two Indian auditors who were affiliated with PricewaterhouseCoopers after they failed to detect at multi-year fraud at Satyam.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 10:19 pm Rupee bounces of 2-month highs on strong dollarMumbai: The Indian rupee retreated on Thursday from more than two-month highs reached in the previous session as the dollar rose broadly against majors overseas while small gains in the local sharemarket failed to provide much cues. At 10:08am, the partially convertible rupee was at Rs45.43/44 per dollar, 0.2 % weaker than Rs45.34/35 at close on Wednesday when it rose to Rs45.3325, its strongest since 11 January. “The dollar rallied globally against major currencies overnight. We are done with most of the share sales, so not much is expected to happen today,” said Nitesh Kumar, an inter-bank dealer with Development Credit Bank. “Even the stock markets are not going anywhere, so the rupee is likely to be ranged,” he added. The dollar rose broadly on Thursday, recovering some losses made the previous day against higher-yielding currencies such as the Aussie, as investors covered short dollar positions. Losses in other regional peers also weighed on sentiment, dealers said. Traders were closely monitoring the domestic stock market for trends on fund flows. In 2010, foreigners have so far bought shares worth nearly a net $3 billion, adding to net purchases of a record $17.5 billion last year. These inflows had helped the rupee gain 4.7% in 2009. Shares rose 0.2% early but trading was choppy. Infosys Technologies and ICICI Bank were leading the rise a day after US stocks rose to a 17-month high. One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were quoted at Rs45.46/56, weaker than the onshore spot rate. In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange and MCX-SX were both quoting at 45.4575, with the total traded volume on the two exchanges at about $800 million. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 10:18 pm Asia stocks near 2-month high, outlook positiveHong Kong: Asian stocks hovered near a two-month high on Thursday, with expectations for continued low global interest rates and modest inflation expected to support equity markets in the near term. Wall Street stocks finished at 17-month highs overnight and government bond yields fell after the U.S. February Producer Price Index fell more than expected, reflecting benign price pressures at the wholesale level. Investors will be looking to US consumer inflation and jobless claims data later on Thursday for further clues on the health of the world’s largest economy. A sustained global economic recovery and portfolio rebalancing has helped developed stock markets outperform emerging markets so far this year. But investors have been moving back into Asian markets in recent weeks, drawn by the region’s strong growth prospects. “The near-term outlook for Asian equities is good because global growth is accelerating and we still have two quarters of good year-on-year growth in front of us,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist with SJS Markets in Hong Kong. Japan’s Nikkei share average edges down 0.2% but stays near 17-month highs. Despite grinding deflation, Japanese companies have become far less gloomy about economic conditions than three months ago, a Reuters poll showed, implying a large improvement in the Bank of Japan’s own tankan survey next month. MSCI’s index of Asia Pacific ex-Japan stocks was trading nearly unchanged on the day. The index has risen 8.4% since February compared with 5.2% on the all-country world index The US dollar rebounded from a decline against higher-yielding currencies on Wednesday. The ICE Futures U.S. dollar index rose 0.2%, and remained 2.5% up on the year. US 10-year Treasury note futures were flat while 10-year Japanese government bond futures fell to a 2-month low after the upbeat Reuters poll. US oil futures slid 0.4% to $82.62 a barrel with the dollar a bit stronger, though staying in sight of the 2010 high of $83.95. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 9:28 pm US accounting watchdog penalises Satyam's auditorsThe Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said it would bar two accountants responsible for the Satyam audits from "being an associated person of a registered public accounting firm," according to documents dated March 16.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 17 Mar 2010 | 9:21 pm Oil below $83 after 1% surge on EIA data, OpecSingapore: Oil eased below $83 a barrel on Thursday, surrendering some of the previous day’s gains when prices surged more than 1%, buoyed by a weaker dollar and signs of improving US oil product demand. A slew of US economic data due later in the day, including weekly jobless claims and February leading indicators, will offer more clues on the pace of recovery in the world’s largest economy and the outlook for energy demand. US crude for April delivery shed 38 cents to $82.55 a barrel by 8:22am, after settling $1.23 higher on Wednesday. London Brent crude for May fell 39 cents to $81.57. “The market’s undertone is pretty firm, and seems to be grasping at every single bit of news that is not worse than expected as an excuse to rally,” said Clarence Chu, a trader at Hudson Capital Energy Asia in Singapore. “But we see a huge roadblock ahead at the $83.95 level - it’s going to be very tough to get past that, and a lot of profit-taking will emerge at that level,” he said, adding that he expected a narrow trading range of $80-$83 over the next week. Oil got a boost on Wednesday from the US Energy Information Administration’s report showing that oil product demand in the world’s top energy consumer was up 3.5% last week from a year ago. US distillate inventories fell 1.5 million barrels and gasoline stocks dropped 1.7 million barrels, deeper than expectations for a 1.1 million-barrel drawdown and an 800,000-barrel decline respectively. Sentiment was also buoyed by Opec’s decision to leave output targets unchanged at its policy-setting meeting in Vienna. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps roughly one in every three barrels of oil, maintained official cuts of 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd). Since curbing output in December 2008 as the economic crisis intensified, Opec has seen prices rally from below $40 a barrel to a peak of $83.95 in January, despite lower compliance from some members in recent months. On Thursday, the US dollar recovered some of its losses against higher-yielding currencies made the previous day, as investors trimmed short dollar positions. The US currency had fallen on Wednesday after a benign inflation reading supported the Federal Reserve’s renewed pledge to keep interest rates near zero for a few more months. Further price support came from news that Russian oil major Rosneft faces a possible export deadlock after bankrupt rival YUKOS won US and British court injunctions, making cash payments to the state oil company in the West very complex. Rosneft declined to comment on the injunctions, which trade and industry sources said were part of a legal battle between YUKOS and the Russian government, which dissolved YUKOS after intensifying pressure on the company between 2003 and 2007. Most of the assets ultimately ended up with Rosneft. At 7:30pm, the US Labor Department will unveil first-time claims for jobless benefits for the week ended 13 March. Economists forecast a total of 455,000 new filings, down from 462,000 in the prior week. The Conference Board will also release its report on February leading economic indicators. Economists forecast a 0.1% rise, compared with a 0.3% increase in the prior month. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 8:54 pm PepsiCo to keep schools sugar-free - Economic Times
Source: Business - Google News | 17 Mar 2010 | 6:44 pm Market closing in on peaks, but volumes still thinThe trading intensity for the current quarter has dipped to 0.32% from around 0.6% levels witnessed in first quarter of this fiscal, when markets were trading at their yearly lows.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 17 Mar 2010 | 3:29 pm Glenmark asked to stop sale of unapproved drugsThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered domestic company, Glenmark Generics to stop marketing 'unapproved' nitroglycerin tablets, used for relieving chest pain.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 2:21 pm Tata Tele sells tower businessTata Teleservices (Maharashtra) on Wednesday announced the sale of its tower business to Quippo-Wireless TT Info Services, a joint venture between the Tatas and Srei group, at an enterprise value of Rs 1,318 crore.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 2:20 pm 'GDP set to rise 4-fold by 2020'The Indian economy is set to become four times its current size in the decade to 2020, with the gross domestic product (GDP) spurting to over $4 trillion (about Rs 205 lakh crore at present exchange rate).Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 2:19 pm HR policy: Is Infy losing employee-friendly status?For over a decade, Infosys has been seen by many as the epitome of employee friendliness. That reputation has now taken a big knock.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 2:18 pm StanC firms up IDR on RBI, Sebi moveStandard Chartered (StanChart) has firmed up its plan to raise Rs 5000 crore through an IDR issue in Indian market.Source: India Business News | Business News - Times of India | 17 Mar 2010 | 2:17 pm Khursheed asks Finmin not to tax Satyam’s inflated incomeNew Delhi: Corporate affairs minister Salman Khursheed has asked the finance ministry not to tax Satyam Computer Services Ltd—now branded Mahindra Satyam—on the basis of income provided by its disgraced founder B. Ramalinga Raju. “We have written to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee... knowing that the income disclosed (by Raju) was not reliable, not honest,” Khursheed said. “How can the (income-tax) department rely on it and say we don’t care whether it is real income or stated income, we will tax it?” Mahindra Satyam had requested Khursheed to take up the issue of taxation with the finance ministry, as it would be unjust to tax income that was never there.  Taxing issues: Salman Khursheed, corporate affairs minister. Manoj Verma/Mint In January last year, Raju confessed to fudging the company’s accounts to the tune of Rs7,136 crore and inflating profits. The company had also paid tax on fake income on bank deposits that didn’t exist. In October last year, the Company Law Board had extended the timeline for Mahindra Satyam to finalize its accounts to 30 June 2010. After the swindle was unearthed, the government took over the reins of the company and later sold it to Tech Mahindra Ltd, which bought the software firm through an open auction in April 2009. In July, Mahindra Satyam had approached the CLB seeking an extension of the deadline to restate accounts of the firm from December to 31 March. The government-appointed board of Satyam had appointed KPMG and Deloitte to audit the books of the information technology firm. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm We did not come to India to be a niche playerChennai: Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault-Nissan, spoke in an interview about the company’s plans in India. Edited excerpts: You have finally started a plant in Chennai to show for all the efforts you put into India.  Planning big: Renault-Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn. Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg But now we think after these years, and with the arrival (of) this plant, that we have a very strong product plan. We have products which are going to be localized, which means very competitive, and we are going to be using our network in India not only to compete in the Indian market but also to use India as an export base for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Will you substantially ramp up capacity in India? The first step is, you have seen it today with the Chennai plant, which is 400,000 capacity. But obviously, if we go to six million cars (projected Indian auto market in 10 years) and we want 10% of this market, it means more capacity to come in the future. What are your plans in India? I think the first step is to have a successful launch of this plant with the first three cars (models) that we will be launching for the next two years, (then) try to build our marketing and sales network, try to establish the name of the brand. (I) feel our brand, it’s not very well known—both from the Nissan side and from the Renault side, so there are some basic work to be done for the next three years. But I want to tell you that we didn’t come to India to be a niche player; we want to be a global car manufacturer being able to offer cars from A to C segments and moving up. Could you please explain the logic? It depends on what you are looking for. We are not looking for a partner who is expert in doing cars because we have this expertise. We have all the technology. We have all the know-how, we have all the processes. We had experimented them practically all over the world. We are present both in developed and developing countries. We have massive presence in China. A lot of the benchmark for the plan here in Chennai has been taken from (the) plant in China. What we are looking for are people who understand and are capable to help us build a very frugal product and define a very frugal product based on their knowledge of the Indian market. And secondly, being able to establish and be a very frugal engineering, a very frugal manufacturing. Why? Because we lost this frugality. When you have engineers coming from Japan, who are coming from France, frugality is not part of the mindset, while the frugality of the engineers in India is something which is obvious. What is frugality? You do the product with the basic specification that are needed, nothing more. You do it with basic investments needed, nothing more. You do it with the basic processes, nothing more. This frugality is something very important. It is important to be successful in India but important also to be embedded into our own processes. This frugality is important for India but it is also important for many other emerging markets in the world because what can be successful in India, there is no reason that it is not going to be successful in Russia or in some countries in South America. This frugal way of doing things—how to define a product of a very low cost—is very basic, is basic functionalities in order to be able to compete in India but also to be able to reproduce something not identical but similar in other emerging markets. cnbctv18@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm Govt seeks to make up for direct tax shortfallNew Delhi: Direct tax collections in the current fiscal are likely to fall short of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s revised estimates, forcing the government to look at ways to cut expenses in some areas. As of 15 March, the deadline for the last instalment of advance tax payments by companies, total direct tax collections amounted to around Rs3.07 trillion compared with Mukherjee’s revised estimates of Rs3.86 trillion in the current fiscal. Direct tax collections in 2009-10 could fall short of revised estimates by around Rs10,000 crore as the advance tax collections in the fourth quarter have been lacklustre, admitted an official in the finance ministry who did not want to be identified. Advance taxes paid in the current quarter, the fiscal year’s last, by India’s 100 largest corporate taxpayers grew 11.84% to Rs22,209 crore from a year earlier. The final figure for the entire list of corporate taxpayers was unavailable. The shortfall could be offset by savings on previously sanctioned expenditure, a second finance ministry official said, asking not to be identified. By early next week, the ministry will finalize ways to deal with any shortfall as a clearer picture of the final number emerges, the official added. If savings on previously sanctioned expenses are not enough to bridge the gap, one option before the government would be to use treasury bills to raise resources. Treasury bills are short-term loans raised by the government to bridge temporary resource gaps. The Union government has managed to use savings on previously sanctioned items to meet unexpected demands on its resources in the current fiscal. On Tuesday, the Rajya Sabha cleared the finance ministry’s second supplementary request for Rs31,780 crore additional spending. The bulk of the spending was to subsidize retail consumption of petroleum products and fertilizers, which was met through such savings. The volatility that has characterized the economy and, consequently, revenue estimates, could exert pressure on the finance ministry to find ways to stick to the Budget’s estimates on revenue and fiscal deficits at 5.3% and 6.7% of the gross domestic product, respectively. Advance taxes paid by companies make up about 40% of total direct tax collections, and any decline has an adverse impact on government finances. A part of the reason for the volatility is that the bulk of direct taxes is sourced from a small pool of companies. For instance, the 100 largest corporate taxpayers contributed about 54% of the aggregate corporate advance tax paid in 2008-09. In the current fiscal, the growth in corporate advance tax payments decelerated between the third and fourth quarters on account of the profitability of banks being adversely affected by hardening interest rates. Banks account for around one-third of the top 50 corporate taxpayers, and their performance has a bearing on the overall collections. A significant increase in tax payments of manufacturing firms was inadequate to offset the pressure on banks’ profits in the last quarter. “That’s an indication people were more bullish in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, when they started counting, it is not growing as much,” said Rahul Garg, executive director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, commenting on the trend in tax payments. Advance taxes are paid on an internal estimate of the year’s profits. “It’s more a matter of preciseness, a better estimate,” he added, while referring to a drop in the growth rate between the quarters. The 11.84% growth in advance tax payments by the 100 largest corporate taxpayers in the current quarter (compared with the same quarter last year) marks a significant drop from the 30% growth seen in the third quarter of this year. Still, for the entire year, the advance tax payments for these firms is, at Rs83,727 crore, 18.26% higher than that seen in 2008-09. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm Left extremism to remain a reality For the first time in five years or so, the current phase of Left-wing rebellion—the fourth major phase since the 1960s—appears vulnerable. Year-long attempts by the home ministry and various state governments to step up intelligence gathering and share it, place police on heightened alert and ship more paramilitary into rebel zones to create pressure points, have affected the Maoist leadership. Several politburo members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), or CPI (Maoist), are in jail, along with many other senior, seasoned, higher echelon leaders who were pivots in both military and propaganda operations. As a result, Maoist discourse has in these past months begun to point to the need to recruit quickly and widely—including in urban spaces; open up more battle lines in rural spaces including the mineral-rich states of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh; and scale up alliances with non-government and human rights organizations, for instance, to boost both its reach and public relations ability. Also Read | Sudeep Chakravarti’s earlier columns Maoist chief Ganapathy said in an interview to Leftist intellectuals reproduced in the January-February issue of People’s March: “…unlike what the enemy wants, end this in a short period, we want to stretch this war and transform the situation to our advantage, favourable to the revolution. They are trying to limit our area, while we are trying to expand.” So are we approaching a sort of tipping point? In some ways, yes. Ganapathy, the nom de guerre of Muppala Laxman Rao, and his remaining colleagues know as well as their enemy that expansion is directly related to the ability to gather rebels, resources to feed and arm them and prepare people to lead them. The government’s approach in the past year has been to decidedly weaken all three abilities. I believe Maoists are far from conceding defeat—unless a series of spectacular security operations forces their hand. And, as yet, offers of talks from both the Maoists and the government are little more than posturing, a continuation of the precept of talk-talk, fight-fight. But if push were to come to shove, Maoists would not disappear. Instead, they are likely to fragment, representing in some ways the situation that existed prior to September 2004, when the CPI (Maoist) arose from a merger of two key rebel groups after years of bitter, often violent power plays: Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). People’s War, which led a clutch of smaller outfits, and so earned for itself the appellation of People’s War Group, held sway in central and southern India. MCC, also a gradual merger and acquisition construct, had a run in eastern and northern India. Under pressure, these could again prove to be fault lines. Further, it is entirely conceivable that the conglomerate that is the CPI (Maoist) could splinter more emphatically into regional groups, as it were, made independent by the control of an individual or group of rebel leaders is able to exert over, say, operations in Orissa, or Jharkhand, and so on. This pattern could be replicated across much of India. Over time, such groups could again begin the rebel merger and acquisition game, coming together, splitting, coming together again, justifying its DNA that at once offers unity of stated purpose—fighting for India’s enormous mass of the discarded and trampled—as well as divergence on account of ego and nuances of Left-wing ideology, a sort of my Marx is bigger and better than your Marx. The continued existence of Left-wing extremism will, I believe, remain a reality for several decades. The reason is simple: India will not have sorted out the reasons that permit such rebellion to grow in the first place. As the home ministry leads the battle against Maoists, it must surely recall its own admission, in its annual report for 2006-07, that Maoists, which the report interchangeably refers to as Naxalites, “typically operate in a vacuum created by inadequacy of administrative and political institutions, espouse local demands and take advantage of the prevalent disaffection, perceived injustice among the underprivileged and remote segments of population”. Sudeep Chakravarti writes on issues related to conflict in South Asia. He is the author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country. He writes a column alternate Thursdays on conflicts that directly affect business. Respond to this column at rootcause@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm Future Group acquires Shoprite store, to unveil new brandNew Delhi: The Future Group, promoted by organized retail pioneer Kishore Biyani, on Tuesday bought the lone India franchisee store of Shoprite Holdings Ltd, South Africa’s biggest grocery chain. Located at Mulund in Mumbai, the Shoprite store will be used to unveil the Future Group’s new brand of stores over the weekend, a company executive said. The new brand of shops will mostly stock food items, the official said, requesting anonymity ahead of an official announcement of the acquisition. The store, spread over 55,000 sq. ft, will also house a bakery.  Going large-scale: Furure Group’s Kishore Biyani. The new store, spread over 55,000 sq. ft, will most likely begin operations from Saturday. Hemant Mishra/Mint The executive declined to name the new brand and the money the group paid to buy the store. A Shoprite executive confirmed the development. This official, who also declined to be named, refused any further detail, including why the store was sold to the Biyani-led group. Shoprite sold multi-brand products in India through a franchisee agreement with Mumbai-based property developer Nirmal Lifestyle. Rajiv Jain, director of Nirmal Lifestyle, and Biyani, chief executive of Future Group, could not be immediately reached for comments. The Future Group’s flagship Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd operates a food supermarket chain called Food Bazaar. These shops are smaller than its Big Bazaar chain. While Food Bazaars are between 10,000 sq. ft and 15,000 sq. ft each, Big Bazaar stores cover an area of around 50,000 sq ft. Nearly 45% of the stock in Big Bazaar stores consists of food items; clothes and general merchandize make up the remaining. The Future Group executive said about 85% of the stock in the new brand would be food items. “If it works, we’ll look at more such stores,” he added. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm Quippo Telecom buys Tata Teleservices tower armMumbai: Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd, or TTML, on Wedenesday, has agreed to sell its 100% stake in its tower arm 21st Century Infra Tele Ltd., or TFCITL, to the world’s largest independent telecom infrastructure company Quippo Telecom Infrastructure Ltd. & Wireless TT Info Services Ltd, or QUIPPO-WTTIL, at an enterprise value of Rs1,318 crore. As part of this deal, TFCITL’s entire portfolio of 2,535 towers in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa will be acquired by QUIPPO-WTTIL and this transaction will provide strategic advantage to QUIPPO-WTTIL as it will complement the tower portfolio of the company in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa, where QUIPPO-WTTIL does not have a significant presence currently. “The acquisition complements our tower portfolio in the strategically important markets, at the same time providing us a contiguous network nationally. The proposed transaction will result in a renewed robust organisation with enhanced product profile in new geographies, economies of scale with numerous cost benefits due to operational synergies and a stronger financial position, thereby resulting in greater shareholder value,” Sunil Kanoria, director, QUIPPO-WTTIL said in a media statement. The TFCITL portfolio, with a high tenancy ratio of 2.15, will further strengthen QUIPPO-WTTIL’s current tenancy ratio which is in excess of 2. This transaction will take the overall portfolio of QUIPPO-WTTIL to over 38,000 towers in India. satish.j@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm Uncertainty persists over emission normsMumbai: With less than a fortnight left for India to upgrade to stricter vehicular emission norms, doubts about implementation as well as pricing abound. Auto makers have already launched vehicles that comply with the new Euro 4 standards for 13 cities, but nationwide availability remains a concern. The supply of Euro 3 fuel in other cities stipulated by the new norms is also uncertain. Oil marketing companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), among others, are seeking an extension of the 1 April deadline for implementing the new norms, said a BPCL spokesperson, as this would allow them to phase in the new fuel. “We shall be filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court in the next few days seeking permission for a phased availability of Euro 3 fuel,” said the spokesman, declining to be named. According to the vehicular emission roadmap laid out by the R. A. Mashelkar panel, new cars registered in 13 Indian cities are required to meet Euro 4 norms effective April, while those in other cities must upgrade to Euro 3 from Euro 2. Two-wheelers must meet Bharat Stage 3 levels. Oil firms say they are ready to supply Euro 4 fuel in 13 cities, but will not be able to supply Euro 3 fuel to other areas by the deadline. To do so, they will need to recall the Euro 2 fuel that’s been supplied. While the switch to Euro 4 will take place as per the 1 April deadline mandated by the apex court, the move to Euro 3 will be completed in phases till October. An affidavit will be filed in the Supreme Court stating the same, a senior Indian Oil executive, who did not want to be named, told Mint last month. Newer-grade fuels are also likely to cost more than the previous versions. A spokesperson for BPCL said the “pricing issue (is) undecided”. It is not clear whether the costs will be passed on to consumers, which will act as a de facto fuel price hike. On Monday, headline inflation for February, at 9.89%, was in almost double digits, the highest in 16 months. Dearer fuel could send inflation further up. Auto makers also prefer a phased availability of Euro 3 compliant vehicles instead of strictly sticking to the 1 April deadline. Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers director Dilip Chenoy said, “Given the complexity of the roll out, we have requested that Euro 3 fuel be available in the entire country by October 2010.” The move to Euro 4 in 13 cities won’t be affected, he said. The non-availability of Euro 3 fuel could damage Euro 4 compliant vehicles in regions where they will be forced to run on Euro 2 fuel. At 500 part per million (ppm), Euro 2 fuel has a 10-fold higher sulphur content in both diesel and petrol than the newest standards. “This will have a corrosive impact on the emission control devices fitted in Euro 4 cars,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, associate director at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.‘ shally.s@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:45 pm U.S. accounting watchdog sanctions Satyam auditorsNEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. accounting watchdog has imposed sanctions against two Indian auditors who were affiliated with PricewaterhouseCoopers after they failed to detect at multi-year fraud at Indian technology services company Satyam Computer Services Ltd.Source: Reuters: Money News | 17 Mar 2010 | 1:30 pm 'Soaring costs are killing Vedanta Alumina'Mukesh Kumar, chief operating officer of Vedanta Alumina (VAL), is a worried man. The companys 1-million tonne refinery in Lanjigarh, which began operations in September 2007, is losing $90 on every tonne of alumina it produces, owing to high input costs.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:58 pm Quippo buys TTML's towers, now largest independent firmQuippo Telecom Infrastructure and Wireless TT Info Services (Quippo-WTTIL) has acquired the tower business of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd, a Tata Group company, in a deal valued at Rs 1,318 crore.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:54 pm BSNL may open up lines for pvt firmsMove could increase Indias broadband penetration over three times.Source: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:52 pm Single-digit growth for global car market: BMWFrankfurt: German auto group BMW AG said on Wednesday that the economic crisis had probably reached its lowest point and that the company’s brands and the global car market could see growth in a single-digit percentage range in 2010. BMW said setbacks in the world economy could continue to arise and that it was still difficult to make a more precise or reliable forecast. The Munich-based group is the biggest luxury car maker in the world by sales. BMW said net income for the whole of 2009 fell 37% to €204 million (Rs1,277 crore) from €324 million in 2008. Revenue for the year fell nearly 4% to €51 billion from €53 billion in 2008. The results were in line with preliminary results released earlier this month. BMW said the launch of its new 5 Series BMW cars would lead to sales gains, especially during the second half of 2010, and that BMW would also continue to revitalize the model range to increase volumes. feedback@livemint.com Source: Home - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:23 pm Why a made-in-India chip remains chimericBangalore: Nine months after the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) made public its intent to spearhead a national initiative on India Microprocessor, a public-private programme, forming a special purpose vehicle called Zerone Corporation, to design and develop a microprocessor at an initial investment of about $200 million (Rs908 crore) in collaboration with the ministry of information technology (IT), the latter remains non-committal about the project. The ministry’s lack of interest doesn’t just indicate a difference of opinion with CSIR—not entirely new in the microprocessor business where turf wars are common—but reflects, at a larger level, India’s approach to hardware in general. Also See Hardware Hurdles (Graphics) CSIR, meanwhile, plans to go ahead with the project, with a smaller budget, and some support from the technology community. “My plan budget has increased this year; I will allocate Rs25 crore for this project and get started,” said Samir K. Brahmachari, director general of CSIR. He said at least eight private sector firms have sent their letter of intent to be part of the project. The idea, a blueprint of which it has readied, is to own intellectual property in this space. “The Prime Minister has asked us to do big projects; I have to pay attention to that call,” said Brahmachari. The ministry of IT was originally supposed to chip in with funds, and serve as a nodal agency for the project. One ministry official, however, told Mint that the project was primarily CSIR’s. Another asked: “Why do we need to develop microprocessor in India, there are enough good and cheap ones available in the market. So many other countries haven’t developed a microprocessor of their own?” Both officials asked not to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media. Why made-in-India chip? A microprocessor shouldn’t be confused with computer chips (although all computer chips are microprocessors), because there are myriad uses for it, said Vinnie Mehta, executive director of Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology. Experts say the technology involved in microprocessors spawns a whole range of technologies—memory design, peripherals, compiler expertise, system integration—along its developmental path and is a must in a country’s technology basket. “A nation without silicon (technology) is like a person without heart,” said Mehta, who was part of the initial discussion on the project. He added that microprocessor technology is entirely missing in the Indian technology ecosystem.“What CSIR plans to do is to design a chip that can go into several things. Even if we were to fail, it’s worth all the learning.” According to a report on IT and electronics hardware manufacturing prepared by a task force set up by the IT ministry and submitted in December, the global electronics market is currently worth $1.75 trillion (Rs79.5 trillion) and is the fastest growing manufacturing sector in the world; it is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2014. The Indian market was worth $45 billion in 2009; of this, 56%, by value, was imported. The domestic market is projected to grow to $125 billion by 2014 and $400 billion by 2020. Even though the report lists several suggestions, championing “uniquely Indian products for uniquely Indian needs at uniquely Indian prices”, it overlooks microprocessor research and development (R&D). Mehta clarified that this is because it is an industry report. At this stage, it’s the government that needs to muster support for microprocessor development, industry will have to come in at a later stage, he added. Incidentally, the government’s track record in nurturing hardware in India isn’t quite heartening. The only public sector semiconductor unit, Semiconductor Complex Ltd (SCL) set up in Chandigarh in 1984, was destroyed in a fire in 1989. Till date, it’s a mystery whether it was a malicious act or an accident. “Why did the government not rebuild SCL to the best global standards? When it comes to electronics, we have virtually lived on the grey market,” said Prabir Purkayastha, chairman of Society for Knowledge Commons in New Delhi who has long been associated with the IT ministry as an expert committee member on industrial applications. “There’s reverse protection of hardware in this country. Strong entrenched lobby in the government has hindered hardware manufacturing.” In high growth sectors such as electronics, say experts, where variants of microprocessors are at the heart of every product, lack of technology ownership has enormous business and strategic implications for India. “People feel happy that companies like LG, Samsung, Nokia and others are assembling products here, but less than 5% of the components are local,” said Sanjiv Narayan, vice-president and managing director of Calypto Design Systems India Pvt. Ltd. His argument: CSIR is not proposing to design a BMW or a Mercedes, but a Nano. “Let it be a 4-bit chip, that is what is put in traffic lights and we don’t even produce that.” An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi alumnus who studied and worked in California before setting up Calypto’s India operations, Narayan is ready to work with Zerone if it takes off. But do we really need it? The ministry’s argument of microprocessor technology being done to death and cheap chips being easily available doesn’t make the cut with technology enthusiasts. “Having worked in adjacent areas, I think there’s scope for a lot of innovation. Moreover, buying chips, or even networking equipment, from overseas has security concerns; there are backdoors…systems can be hacked into,” said Ajit Shelat, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Nevis Networks (India) Pvt. Ltd in Pune, which makes security products for local area networks. Nevis is one of the eight companies to write in supporting Zerone. An IIT Bombay alumnus and a serial entrepreneur, Shelat sees a wide range of low-cost applications coming out of home-grown technology. Technophiles compare Zerone to the setting up of Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) in 1984. When C-DoT began with 120-line exchanges, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was already importing 10,000-line exchanges, but it was due to the former, and its eventual 256-line exchange, that we saw the rural telephony revolution in India, said Narayan. Others cite the example of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which supported a local microprocessor initiative nine years ago; today, in its third version, the Chinese microprocessor, named Godson-3, doesn’t just have specifications that match the best in industry, but enormous free software support as well. Designed by the Chinese, the chip is manufactured by the Italian-French semiconductor company STMicroelectronics NV. “Do you know how much will China save by not having to pay Intel and Microsoft when theses systems become mass usable?” asked Narayan. Still, noble as Brahmachari’s intentions may be, a project of this magnitude where there’s a new technology iteration every 18 months, needs long-term political and financial commitment. More importantly, it needs to be done within the IT ministry’s ambit as the latter has end-to-end domain expertise and deals with the user industry. Zerone is already losing time as the publicly available OpenSPARC architecture that it initially planned to build on, will become obsolete in three-four years. Realistically, said a CSIR official close to the project, “unless the ministry of IT and the user industry gets on board, not much will come out it”. Brahmachari said there was similar scepticism when he started the open source drug discovery programme two years ago, but that today it has hundreds of Indian and overseas researchers hooked on to it. Praising it, Bernard Munos, an adviser in corporate strategy at American drug maker Eli Lilly Co., said: “When it comes to big ideas for dealing with the innovation crisis in drug R&D, the leadership has come from three sources: Francis Collins (director of National Institutes of Health, US), Samir Brahmachari, and WHO/TDR (World Health Organization’s special programme in tropical diseases). If it were not for them, we would be in even bigger trouble. All three had the vision to see trouble ahead when the rest of the world could not be bothered; they had the courage to speak up about it, and the drive to act. In the case of Samir and WHO, they also did it on a shoestring.” It took scientists four years to build consensus for Chandrayaan-1, said Brahmachari. “We’ll convince people about Zerone as well.” Graphics by Ahmed Raza Khan/Mint Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:21 pm Baltic Exchange begins trials on shipping routeBangalore: The Baltic Exchange last week began testing a voyage rate assessment on a key iron ore shipping route from India to China, in a bid to boost its relevance to the fledgling iron ore swaps market. The daily rate is based on the S7 India-China supramax iron ore charter route. The dollar-per-tonne freight rate derived from the charter rate helps break down the freight component of the landed price for iron ore shipped from India to China and sold in the spot market. The new rate assessment seeks to allow freight derivatives and iron ore swap traders to separate the freight element of iron ore costs, so they can hedge against volatility in ore prices and freight costs in the emerging spot market for ore. The rate will be calculated based on fixtures reported by panellists on that route to the Baltic Exchange. Supramax ships are mid-sized vessels that can carry as much as 60,000 tonnes of dry bulk commodities. Such ships are in demand from commodity shippers because their smaller size allows them to call at a wider range of world ports and terminals where bigger ships cannot enter due to depth restrictions. The first forward freight agreement, or FFA, traded on the new Baltic Exchange supramax route from India to China was concluded earlier this week between Morgan Stanley and Cargill International. The trade was brokered by UK-based iron ore and freight derivates brokerage Freight Investor Services Ltd. FFAs offer shipowners, charterers and traders a means of protecting themselves against the inherent volatility of freight rates. Trading FFAs entails taking a position in a futures (paper) market as a substitute for a forward cash (physical) transaction. “We think that this service will be of particular interest to the many shipowners, charterers and freight traders active in the growing Indian iron ore export market,” Jeremy Penn, chief executive of the Baltic Exchange, said in a statement. The Baltic Exchange, headquartered in London, is the world’s only independent source of maritime market information for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative contracts. China imports around 100 million tonnes of iron ore a year from India, taking about 80% of what the world’s third largest supplier of the commodity produces. Indian iron ore prices have reached nearly $140 (Rs6,400) per tonne in recent weeks. A dollar-per-tonne rate has long been available for the other two principal iron ore trading routes. “India is exporting 110 mt a year of iron ore and we think there is a lot of potential in this route and a lot of value for users of physical freight, freight derivatives and iron ore swaps,” said John Banaszkiewicz, managing director of Freight Investor Services. Source: World Business - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 12:01 pm 3D films gaining prominence in India after ‘Avatar’ successMumbai: Success of James Cameron’s 3D epic “Avatar” is encouraging more and more Indian filmmakers to try out 3D films. Rajesh Mishra, CEO, Indian operations UFO Moviez India Ltd said that technology providers like his company are in the process of implementing 3D compliant projection systems. He said 2,500 of the total 13,000 cinemas in India are digitalised. “In the next three years, there is likely to be 50% digitalisation,” he said. “We feel there is scope for fantasy and action genre movies to be shot in the 3D format. Lot of 3D films are in the planning stage,” Mishra said. At present, UFO Moviez has tied up with 200 multiplexes and 500 single screens across the country to screen IPL matches. “We are working on the logistics to showcase the semi-finals and finals in 3D format for an immersive experience. The ticket rates would be slightly higher..about Rs 30 to 40 more than the current prices,” Mishra said. UFO Moviez has set up a stall at the ongoing FICCI-FRAMES conference to showcase their 3D technology. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 8:14 am Number of visitors to Facebook beats GoogleSan Francisco: Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed. Facebook’s homepage finished the week ending 13 March as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise. The “important milestone,” as described by Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185% increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009. By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased only 9% in the same time - although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps. Taken together, Facebook.com and Google.com amounted to 14% of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said. Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service. In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail’s format. Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 4:55 am Opec ministers agree no change to output Vienna: “Opec ministers agreed not to change output targets they are already exceeding as demand should pick up later in the year to mop up extra barrels,” a Opec delegate said on Wednesday. But with economic recovery still looking fragile as powerhouse China considers curbs on credit, members are likely to be asked to comply with production levels set in December 2008 to keep supply at 24.84 million barrels per day (bpd). “Good demand, reliable supply, beautiful prices—we are very happy,” Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi said just before entering the meeting. Benchmark crude futures traded at over $82 per barrel—in the area that Opec’s biggest exporter considers appealing to both consumers and producers alike, despite overproduction by Opec. A nascent recovery in the global economy in the last year and rising prices have encouraged revenue-hungry Opec members to pump more oil and in February they were making just 53% of promised cuts of 4.2 million bpd. “Everything is relative—if there was no demand there would be no leakage,” said Naimi. Saudi Arabia, Opec’s biggest producer, is pumping around 8.1 million bpd—more than twice its nearest competitor in the group, Iran, but closer than many to its target level. The kingdom has plenty of spare capacity which makes it the most flexible member of the group to meet consumption changes. Naimi said that he expected world oil demand in the second half of this year to grow by about a million barrels per day, adding that he thought growth would be mainly from Asia. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects China’s economy to expand 10% this year while Oecd head Angel Gurria is forecasting global growth of 4-4.5% this year because China and India are pulling very hard. There are concerns, however, that China might curb credit in an effort to restrain its inflation, which now looks set to be 3.7% in 2010, the World Bank said on Wednesday, up from a previous estimate of 2%. “While there has been improvement in the oil market outlook in recent months, there is still a long way to go before we can feel at ease with the situation,” Opec president Germanico Pinto said in a speech before the meeting started. “The issue of exit strategies from stimulus packages of a year ago and the right timing of adjustment is becoming a key factor in the recovery of prices,” he added. “Opec is responding to growth in the same way central banks are, in some way. They don’t want to move until a nascent expansion turns into a more solid expansion, they don’t want to raise production too soon,” said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. Ministers have said that there should be no need for any extra Opec meetings this year with the next scheduled check-up due in September—after the traditionally weak second quarter. Opec will also meet in Quito, capital of the president Ecuador, in the second or third week of December. Source: World Business - Livemint.com | 17 Mar 2010 | 4:40 am
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