Tata Industries reduces stake in Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals
Mumbai: The Tata group's holding company Tata Industries has sold some strategic holdings in Tata Tea and Tata Chemicals in 1998-99. The company raised Rs 93 crore from this sale. However, the company has acquired fresh holdings in the telecom and IT industries.

Tata Industries' stake in Tata Chemicals has come down from 25,77,648 shares or 1.41 per cent of the paid-up capital to 77,648 shares. Its holding in Tata Tea has dropped from 14,73,112 shares or 2.96 per cent to 73,112 shares.
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McDonald's acquiring stake in Vista
New Delhi: McDonald's is acquiring a 50 per cent stake held by Cardinal Foods in Vista Processed Foods, a vegetable and poultry products supplier.

McDonald's is expected to get into manufacturing, developing and processing of varieties of meat, dairy products, vegetable, cereal and other ready-to-cook products.

McDonald's will pay Rs 1.7 crore for the stake. The company will also infuse Rs 14 crore in Vista, a 50:50 joint venture between Cardinal Foods and Leges Corporation of the US.
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PowerGen plans to buy stake in Jindal Tractebel
Mumbai: PowerGen India, subsidiary of British PowerGen, is considering buying the 50 per cent stake held by Tractebel of Belgium in Jindal Tractebel Power Company, a 50:50 joint venture between Tractebel and Jindal Vijaynagar Steel. The 250 MW project set up at a cost of Rs 1,100 crore has an equity component of Rs 360 crore.
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Wipro Net to have share capital of Rs 25 crore
Bangalore: Wipro Net, the newly announced joint venture between Wipro and the $8 billion Royal Dutch Telecom to offer internet service will have a share capital of Rs 25 crore. Wipro will hold 55 per cent stake in the venture, and Royal Dutch Telecom the rest.

The proposal is being put before the Foreign Investments Promotion Board.
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NH Securities acquires stake in Sankhya
Mumbai: NH Securities, a stock broking firm, has acquired a 26 per cent stake in Sankhya Infotech, a Hyderabad-based unlisted infotech company. The company, with a revenue of Rs 4 crore, develops software products used in the aviation industry.

NH Securities has bought about 2.5 million shares of Sankhya Infotech at a premium of Rs 156 per share. The purchase precedes Sankhya's initial public offering of 1.68 million shares for cash at par.
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Voltas cuts debts
Mumbai: Voltas has brought down its borrowings through resources from the sale of its chemical plant and white goods undertakings and the sale of investments in Merind.

The company's 1998-99 annual report says that despite setting aside these sums, there is an extraordinary income of Rs 26 crore, improving its debt-equity ratio from 2.26:1 in 1998 to 1.23:1 in 1999.

The company has also established a territorial organisation, which is expected to improve sales and ensure more efficient use of cash and a strict commercial discipline.
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Indian Steamship vessel arrested in Singapore
Mumbai: A tanker belonging to Indian Steamship has been arrested by the Keppel Shipyard of Singapore. A delay is finalising the rate structure for crude oil tankers and a procedural wrangle between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and the Oil Coordination Committee is said to have caused the arrest.

The Sshipping Ccorporation of India has already advanced Rs six crore to the shipyard and bailed out the vessel, Ratna Abha.
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Silverline, Siebel join hands
Mumbai: Silverline Technologies will join the Siebel alliance programme of Siebel Systems as a consulting partner. Silverline will be offering implementation and configuration services for Siebel systems solutions.

Siebel is a global leader in customer relationship management solutions.
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Indian Oil puts up options for Kuwait Petroleum
Mumbai: The Indian Oil Corporation has offered its prospective partner in the Rs 8,000-crore east coast refinery, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, an option of marketing products either through a new joint venture company or through Indianoil's existing infrastructure.

IOC has made the offer keeping in mind that all multinational oil companies are keen on getting a foothold in marketing first before investing in refineries. Kuwait Petroleum is still to decide on teaming up with Indianoil in the 9-million tonne refinery, which is expected to be commissioned in 2002. The partners will hold 26 per cent each in the project.
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Oberois to get into two star hotels
New Delhi: The Oberoi group plans to launch two-star hotels.

The Financial Express, in a report, quoted East India Hotels vice chairman and managing director P.R.S. Oberoi as saying that the group has identified about 20 to 22 cities where the proposed two-star hotels will be set up.

The group will get into this lower-end segment once it completes the expansion project of its five star hotels.
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Scooters India shelves car plan
New Delhi: Scooters India has shelved its plan to manufacture passenger cars. It has withdrawn from a joint venture with Amerigon Inc. of the US and the Bangalore-based Maini group.

Industry minister Sikander Bakht is said to have expressed reservations about the public sector unit's foray into the car market.
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Reliance refinery to supply 8.5 lakh tonnes of diesel
Mumbai: Reliance Petroleum will supply 8.50 lakh tonnes of high speed diesel from its Jamnagar refinery by November, almost three times the quantity produced in August 1999.

The company will supply 1.1 lakh tonnes of motor spirit in November. Its target for August is 16,000 tonnes. It will also supply 1.3 lakh tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas and 15,000 tonnes of superior kerosene. There will be no supply of aviation turbine fuel.
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Siticable to shut off Star, National Geographic channels
New Delhi: Siticable will shut off the Star News, National Geographic and CNBC channels till its franchisees agree on payment of subscription fee prescribed by these channels. Siticable sources, however, hoped that the matter will be resolved in a day or two.

While Star News has just become a pay channel, National Geographic and CNBC have been pay channels although they have so far not pressed the cable operators for payment of the subscription fee.
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Investment firm bids for Reynolds
Chicago: Michigan Avenue partners, an investment firm, revealed that it has made a cash offer for Reynolds, which is higher than the $4.1 billion offer made by Alcoa.

Michael Lynch, chairman of the firm, said, it is important that Reynolds remain independent from Alcoa. "We view it as anti-competitive, he said.

Mr Lynch did not give details of the bid except saying it topped the $65-a-share offer Alcoa made.
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BNP gains control of Paribas
Paris: French financial officials said Banque Nationale de Paris won control of Banque Paribas but could not get a majority stake in Societe Generale, failing in its three-way merger effort.

Provisional figures indicated that BNP won 65.1 per cent of the capital of Paribas and 36.8 per cent of Societe Generale.
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Italy finds Coke abused market position
Atlanta: Italian regulators found that Coca Cola Co and its bottlers violated anti-trust laws by abusing a dominant market position. Coke potentially faces fines of as much as $ 80 million or 10 per cent of its annual sales revenue in Italy,.

A final ruling is expected only in December.
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Toshiba, other companies get music technology
Silicon Valley: A US company has granted licences to Toshiba Corp, Sanyo Electric and Mitsubishi Electric Corp to use its software in portable music players.

Robert Flynn, senior vice president of Liquid Audio, a US company developing systems to distribute music via the internet said the software SP3 stores, downloads music into a flash memory and is equipped with a mechanism against illegal copying of music.

The US company has granted the licence free of charge.
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BSkyB to buy stake in football club
London: BSkyB is in talks to buy a 9.9 per cent stake in Chelsea Village, owners of the Chelsea premiership football team, as part of a new drive to build an investment portfolio of British football clubs.

BSkyB is expected to confirm that it is buying a 9.9 per cent stake in Leeds Sporting, owners of fellow premiership club Leeds United for an estimated $12.05 million, Sunday Telegraph said.
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Kingfisher to buy Elkjop
London: British firm Kingfisher is considering a $562.4 million bid for Scandinavia's largest electrical retailer Elkjop ASA as part of its drive into Europe. Elkjop confirms it has been in talks with a large international company.

Kingfisher owns the Comet electrical chain in Britain and Darty and BUT in France, Vanden Borre in Belgium and ProMarket in Germany.
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