NEWS on 10.06.2010

Today news 10-06-2010


1. THE board of Reliance Industries (RIL) is believed to have approved plans to enter the Indian telecommunications sector when the opportunity arises, two persons familiar with the development told ET.
India ’s largest private sector company is expected to go for only the lucrative corporate bandwidth market, or the business of selling telecom and internet services to companies rather than individuals.
2. India’s largest natural healthcare company and maker of Vatika and ‘Real’ juice brand Dabur India (DIL) on Wednesday said in a release that the Bombay High Court has approved the merger of Fem Care Pharma with the company.
3. Canon India , the imaging products company, has completed a trial, using a systems integrator, for the central government’s ambitious Unique ID (UID) project, Aadhaar, in the data base collection part of the project.
4. Formica, the global laminate brand, is back in India . The laminate maker exited the country a year ago following the expiry of its decades old brand licence agreement with the Nusli Wadia group’s diversified conglomerate, the Bombay Burmah Trading Company Ltd (BBTCL).
5. BHARTI Airtel has signed a multi-million dollar deal with Brand Union, a consultancy owned by communications giant WPP, as it prepares for a image makeover in keeping with its newly-acquired status of a global company after the acquisition of Zain Telecom's African operations.
6. THE Indian tax authorities had advised British telecom major Vodafone to pay tax on its $11-billion acquisition of Hutchison Essar before it sealed the transaction, according to a recent income tax order. In a letter on March 23, 2007, the Income Tax (I-T) department had asked Vodafone to pay withholding tax, nearly one-and-a-half month before the telco made the payment to Hong Kong-based Hutchison International for buying two-third stake in Hutchison Essar.
7. ANDREW YULE & Co is making a foray into the designer speciality tea segment to spruce up its margins in the current fiscal. These teas, which can fetch Rs 7,000 - Rs 15,000 per kg in the international market will be sold at high-street departmental stores like Harrods.
8. THE Fortis Healthcare board on Wednesday gave the company the go-ahead to raise Rs 2,750 crore through fresh issue of securities, including shares, and also increased the company’s borrowing limit to Rs 6,000 crore.
9. ELECTRICITY Transmission Company Power-Grid Corporation may sell 20% to public that could raise Rs 8,000 crore, which may be equally split between the government and the company, said two people familiar with the plans.
10. STATE-OWNED lender State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to raise Rs 20,000 crore through a rights issue by the end of the fiscal year.
“It is still at the conversation stage (with the government)... If at all it comes up, may be it would be coming up towards the end of this fiscal year,” SBI chairman OP Bhatt said on the sidelines of an industry event.
11. The Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC) will lease 50 acres in the SEZ near Nagpur airport to Air India (AI) to establish an aircraft maintenance base that will be set up by Boeing Company with an investment of around $100 million, an official said.
12. ISHTITMAR Capital World, the investment arm of Dubai World, has decided to convert bonds of no-frills carrier Spice Jet into equity shares to sell them in the open market, said a person close to the matter.
13. EYEING business from domestic and international shipping lines that ply through the busy sea route between Dubai and Colombo , Pipavav Shipyard (PSL) is all set to construct a new dry dock in Gujarat , which is expected to be the world’s biggest dock to undertake repair and maintenance of vessels operating in the region.
14. BHARTI Airtel will form separate tower companies in each of the African nations where it is present, marking the commencement of efforts to collaborate with other mobile phone firms to share costs and save money.
The 15 independent entities will be replicas of the Indus Towers arm owned by Bharti, along with Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular in India , and African mobile companies will be invited to be part of the planned new ventures, Manoj Kohli, chief executive officer of Bharti’s international unit told ET.
15. Reliance Power’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Reliance Coal Resources, will make an upfront payment of Rs 500 crore ($106 million) for acquiring the mines. The balance payment will be paid in a staggered fashion depending on the mines meeting certain production targets. If all production linked targets are met, the total value of the deal will be $1.6 billion.
16. Back-office service provider Hinduja Global Solutions is looking to acquire companies in the US , UK and Latin America in the customer relationship management (CRM) space, a top official said. The firm, which has about $100 million in cash, is eyeing targets with an annual revenue of $25-$100 million, Partha Sarkar, CEO,Hinduja Global said on Wednesday.
17. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories has got tentative approval from US regulators to launch the generic version of AstraZeneca’s Accolate, used to treat asthma, a company spokesman said. The company is currently working on manufacturing plants for zafirlukast, the generic name of Accolate, and will decided the time of its launch after getting the final approval from the US Food & Drug Administration, the spokesman said.
18. THE cost of pan-India broadband airwaves, which crossed Rs 12,000 crore after 14 days of bidding, has baffled analysts and stunned telecom companies participating in the auctions, many of whom concede that the price has become ‘highly irrational.’
19. FINANCE minister Pranab Mukherjee asked income-tax officials to look beyond the Rs 4,30,000-crore tax collection target for the current financial year, with the economy expected to expand 8.5% during the period.
20. The Cabinet on Thursday is likely to discuss the Planning Commission's mid-term appraisal of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12), in which it scaled down the growth projection for the period from 9% to 8.1%. Sources said that if the mid-term appraisal gets the Cabinet nod, the same would be placed before the National Development Council.
21. Road, transport and highway minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday said he is in talks with Singapore ’s investment firm Temasek Holdings for setting up a fund, which could have a corpus of $2 billion, for building roads and ports in India .
22. The government on Wednesday said that it would list 35 public sector companies on stock markets over the next five years. The move would generate about Rs 1.5 lakh crore in revenues for the Centre, minister of state for heavy industry and public sector enterprises Arun Yadav said.
23. THE government wills kick-start the bidding process for the 4,000 mw Orissa power projects this week, undeterred by the setback suffered by the Chhattisgarh ultra mega power project that faces uncertainty over allocation of captive coal blocks.
24. SBI on Wednesday hinted that base rate that will replace existing prime lending rate (PLR) will be between 7.5% and 8.5%.
25. BANKS continued to be net borrowers on Wednesday, raising Rs 66,170 crore from RBI at 5.25%. This is the third consecutive day when banks have borrowed over Rs 60,000 crore from the central bank by pledging government securities.
26. Pharma Company Parabolic Drugs (PDL) said on Wednesday it plans to raise up to Rs 200 crore through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that opens for subscription on June 14. The Chandigarh-based contract manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and API intermediates will use the proceeds for setting up new facilities, besides capacity expansion of existing ones and repayment of debt, a top company official said.