Indian Rayon to buy back 25 per cent capital
Mumbai: The AV Birla group company Indian Rayon is buying back up to one-fourth of its outstanding equity shares at a cost of Rs 70 to Rs 90 per share. At the price of Rs 90, it will cost the company Rs 152 crore.

Indian Rayon has a cash surplus of Rs 200 crore.

AV Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla announced that the company will also exit the loss-making sea water magnesia business. The group will probably sell it and, if it cannot by September-end this year, then close it down and dispose of the assets.

Mr Birla said Indian Rayon is working at below capacity and there are no major capital expenditure plans. The best way to add value to shareholders is to return the funds to them.

The company is expected to seek approval of the shareholders at its 17 September annual general  meeting for the sale of the sea water magnesia plant and the buyback scheme.
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Becosule Plus from Pfizer
Mumbai: Pfizer, the Indian subsidiary of the US pharma major Pfizer Inc, is extending its Becosule brand in order to free the product from price control regulations. The company has announced that a new product, Becosule Plus, will be free from the price control and may eventually replace Becosules, whose price was slashed recently.

Becosules Plus will hit the market this week. The new product contains the coenzyme vitamin H or Biotin. It will be priced just above Rs 11 for a strip of 10, marginally below the price of Becosules, when it was brought under price control and the price was cut to Rs 7.90.

The company also announced that it will launch a new antibiotic in India.
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Fiat Ranjangaon unit to be global sourcing base
Mumbai: Fiat of Italy is to turn its Rs 1,600-crore Ranjangaon facility in Maharashtra into a global sourcing base. The company has already started exports from Ranjangaon although the project is set to be commissioned by 2001. The export items include dashboards for Uno, besides Uno cars.

The company will come out with a limited edition version of the Uno, called Uno Jubilee, as part of the centenary celebrations of Fiat Spa.
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Shell strikes oil in Rajasthan
New Delhi: Shell group, the Anglo-Dutch petroleum major has struck oil in the Rajasthan desert. This is the first time a major oil source has been found after the sector was opened for private participation.

Oil sources have been detected in Sanchor Basin in Rajasthan and Gujarat. The oil was struck at a depth of 2,000 metres. The petroleum ministry said crude is being generated at the rate of 2,000 barrels per day. The crude is light oil with API gravity of 35 degrees, a ministry statement said.

The exploration has been done jointly by Shell India and Cairn Energy plc. The oil find in this area is of special significance, say experts, and it is expected to attract further investments.
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Zee files case against Star TV in London
Mumbai: Zee Telefilms and its chairman Subhash Chandra have filed a case against News Corp and News Cayman Holdings in London's High Court of Justice, chancery division. The case seeks a restraint on Star TV from broadcasting Hindi programmes on the Star Plus channel.

Zee Telefilms alleges that News Corp has violated the shareholders agreement of Asia Today, a joint venture between Zee and News Corp, by turning Star Plus into a predominantly Hindi entertainment channel, thus entering into direct competition with Zee TV.
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Oil product prices hiked
New Delhi: Public sector oil companies have raised the prices of industrial liquid fuels following a firming up of international prices.

Naphtha prices have been increased by Rs 560 per tonne, light diesel oil by Rs 300 per tonne, furnace oil by Rs 260 per kilolitre and low sulphur heavy stock by Rs 280 per tonne, an official of Indian Oil Corporation said. The prices have come into effect from midnight of 16 August.
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Enterprise storage server from Tata IBM
Bangalore: IBM will make its enterprise storage server available in India soon. The server is scaleable from 430 GB to 11.2 terabyte.

The company visualises an emerging need for connecting all kinds of data to all kinds of systems and make them available easily. While storage capacity has been available, it is not available in the form that IBM is now offering.
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BSES to set up meter unit
Mumbai: BSES Ltd, Mumbai's private sector power supply company, is setting up an electronic meter-manufacturing unit at Silvassa in Gujarat. Its entire proposed annual output of 2 lakh meters will be used by BSES and its group companies.

Land for the project has been acquired for the new unit, which will be part of the company's subsidiary, BSES Telecom. It will have working capital of Rs 6 crore, R.V. Shahi, chairman and managing director of BSES, said.
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ACC to increase blended cement output
Mumbai: Associated Cement Companies will increase its blended cement production from 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the total production by 2001-2002. The company will convert its cement plants producing ordinary Portland cement into blended cement.

After the expansion, the company's capacity will be 15 million tonnes per annum.
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Hindustan Motors, Hyundai sign pact
Mumbai: Hindustan Motors has entered into an agreement with Hyundai Space & Aircraft and Hyundai Corporation for procuring low-emission diesel power units to be fitted on to a motor vehicles manufactured by the company.

Initially the units will be imported, and later made locally, A.S. Narayanan, executive director of the company said.
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Inadequate response for SAIL VRS
New Delhi: The Steel Authority of India, which has introduced a voluntary retirement scheme with the aim of slashing its workforce by 10,000, has not received an encouraging response so far.

About five months are left for the scheme to close. The steel company wants to relocate 30 per cent of its senior executives in its Delhi offices to various plants.
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VSNL, IOC, GAIL divestment cleared
New Delhi: The core group of secretaries cleared the disinvestment programmes of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Gas Authority of India Ltd and Indian Oil Corporation.

The sale of one million VSNL shares will be priced through book-building. The panel's decision will be forwarded to the group of ministers on divestment for final approval. The sale offer will be made to retail investors in the domestic market in lots of 10 shares.
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Maars Software buys Saphire division
Chennai: Maars Software International said it had acquired the Systematic Products division of Saphire Systematics London.

Under the agreement, Maars Software has obtained the intellectual property rights of the division's products along with its customer base of 1,000 firms in UK and Kenya.
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Daewoo to have only 6 units, linked to cars
Seoul: Creditors of Daewoo group finalised a restructuring plan for the group, which virtually dismantles the country's second largest conglomerate into six units, all related to its car business.

At present the group has 22 units. The restructuring, expected to be completed by the year-end, will help the group reduce its debt-to-equity ratio to 196 per cent from 527 per cent at end-1998.

"Daewoo would be reshaped to a group specialising in automobiles, with four car-linked companies and two others supporting this business," Lee Hun-jai, chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission, Korea's powerful regulator, said.

The six units to be retained by the group will be Daewoo Motor, Daewoo Motor Sales, the trading division of Daewoo Corp, the car-related business of Daewoo Telecom, the machinery division of Daewoo Heavy Industries and the unlisted Daewoo Capital.

But, Daewoo group will end up literally with just Daewoo Corporation if control of Daewoo Motor, which is the centre of the car business, eventually goes to General Motors.
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SocGen, BNP boards to meet
Paris: The boards of Societe Generale and Banque Nationale de Paris are to meet in order to decide their positions before France's banking regulator meets to decide on their fate.

The provisional results of France's six-month-old bank takeover battle showed that BNP had won control of Paribas but failed to get a majority in Societe Generale, which means BNP must ask for approval to keep its stake in SocGen.
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Samsung assures motor unit creditors
Seoul: Korea's Samsung group has pledged to guarantee payment of 2.8 trillion won to its creditors to cover debts owed by its ailing Samsung Motors unit, a spokesman at Hanvit Bank, a major creditor to the group said,

In response to the pledge the creditors will call off the planned financial sanctions against the conglomerate, including cutting off of fresh loans, the bank spokesman said.
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VNU makes bid for Nielsen
Amsterdam: VNU, the Dutch publisher launched a $5.2 billion offer for premier US TV rating agency Nielsen Media Research.

VNU said it will offer $37.75 a share in cash for the American company, which measures television audiences in the US and Canada and has recently branched off into assessing internet use.

VNU, whose publishing empire ranges from consumer magazines and regional newspapers to phone directories and business information, said the deal marked a major step in its long-term strategy of growing high-margin, recession-resistant businesses.
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Alcoa turns hostile
New York: Alcoa said it proposes to launch a hostile $4.2 billion cash and stock offer to acquire Reynolds Metals, after  the world's No 3 aluminium producer rejected friendly overtures from Alcoa.

Alcoa said it will seek the support of Reynold's shareholders to replace the current board of directors, redeem the company's 'poison pill' anti-takeover defence and remove all other impediments to a takeover.
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Linde bids for AGA AB
Stockholm: Linde AG, the German engineering group, has launched a $3.7 billion cash bid for Swedish industrial gas company AGA BG in a move to consolidate the European industrial gases market.

The merger offer, closely following France's Air Liquide and US Air Products' taking over Britain's BOC, is expected to  create Europe's second largest technical gases group and the fourth largest worldwide.

The offer requires approval from only competition authorities and not from the shareholders of Linde.
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Cisco buys Calista
San Jose: Cisco Systems signed an agreement to acquire Calista Inc for $55 million in stock.

Cisco said it plans to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2000.
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