NTPC to have stake in Gujarat Pipavav LNG
New Delhi: The National Thermal Power Corporation
will pick up a 26 per cent stake in Gujarat Pipavav LNG
Company. A memorandum of understanding for the purpose has
been signed and a promoters' agreement is being worked out,
NTPC chairman and managing director Rajendra Singh said.
NTPC will now hold equity
in both Gujarat Pipavav LNG and Petronet LNG, which is
a direct competitor for Gujarat Pipavav. When queried
about this situation and especially since Petronet has
expressed reservations about this, Mr Singh dismissed
it as a worldwide practice and said the company intends
to go ahead with its plans.
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Govt
may consider divestment in power sector
New Delhi: The power ministry will consider
divestment of its holding in central power utilities to
raise resources for the sector. It may do this through
global depository receipts or by selling some of the assets
of the power utilities.
"The government could
consider disinvestment in the National Thermal Power Corporation
and Power Grid Corporation of India in future," power
secretary V.K. Pandit said at a seminar. He said this
is in line with the UK model of power industry restructuring.
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Essar
package offer to FRN holders
New Delhi: The Essar group is understood
to have finalised a package for holders of Essar Steel
floating rate notes. The package will simultaneously offer
the options of a five-to-seven year rollover and redemption
at a mutually agreed discounted price.
The options are part of
a debt restructuring plan worked out by Banc America Securities
to reduce the company's debt-equity ratio from 2.1: 1
to 1.5:1.
The proposal also includes
extending the maturity period of the loans taken by Essar
Steel from financial institutions from two to seven years,
floating a 1:1 rights issue of Rs 330 crore and selling
to Stemcor 51 per cent of the equity of Essar Minerals,
a company floated by spinning off Essar Steel's pelletisation
project. An agreement has already been signed by the two
companies.
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Duncans
ropes in Synergics for UP project
Mumbai: G.P. Goenka group company Duncans
Industries has taken US-based Synergics Energy Development
as a partner for its 330 MW Shrinagar Hydro Electric Power
project being set up at a cost of Rs 2,200 crore in Uttar
Pradesh. Synergics is a member of Germany's Voith group
and a leader in hydro turbines.
There are rumours that Duncans
Industries has divested as much as 95 per cent of its
holding in the project to Synergics, although company
officials said the equity structure will be decided after
the terms of the project are finalised. Shrinagar Hydro
Electric Power project has an equity component of Rs 660
crore.
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A
new company for Tetley acquisition
Calcutta: Tata Tea will set up a special
purpose vehicle in the UK to acquire Tetley, a top tea
brand in the world. Tata Tea chairman Ratan Tata said
at the annual general meeting of the company that the
due diligence exercise for the acquisition will start
shortly the actual bidding process will commence on the
basis of the report. He said the price for the acquisition
may vary between 260 million and 290 million.
Mr Tata said investment
in Tetley will be in the region of Rs 2,000 crore. "The
Tetley acquisition will give us a strong global presence,"
he added.
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Nakoda
Textiles may acquire Orkay
Baroda: Orkay Synthetics may be taken
over by the Surat-based Nakoda Textiles Industries. Nakoda
Textiles' management has confirmed that talks are on,
but refused to divulge any details, as the talks are at
a "pre-preliminary stage".
Nakoda Textiles, a company
promoted by Babulal Jain in August 1984, is a leading
player in texturised yarn. The company is interested in
only the Patalganga-based units of Orkay. There have been
reports of Orkay Synthetics going into liquidation.
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Swatch
will have assembly unit in India
New Delhi: The Swatch group will set
up an assembly facility for watches in India in two years.
The facility will be for
either an existing brand or a new brand meant for the
low-end segment of the market, Ravi Thakran, the Swatch
group's regional general manger for South Asia said. The
group has launched the Tissot range of watches in India.
Swatch has some 42 plants
spread over Switzerland, the US, Germany, China and Malaysia.
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Maersk
wants to buy Thapar stake in Indian unit
New Delhi: Danish shipping company Maersk
has approached the Foreign Investments Promotion Board
for buying out the 20 per cent equity held by the Thapar
group in its Indian joint venture Maersk Shipping Line.
The acquisition is being
done through a negotiated deal. Ballarpur Industries holds
the Thapar group stake in the venture
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Indian
Oil hikes capacity in Gujarat refinery
New Delhi: Indian Oil Corporation has
commissioned atmospheric unit No 5 at its Gujarat refinery,
increasing the refinery's capacity from 9.5 million tonnes
to 12.5 million tonnes per annum.
The unit comprises a crude
distillation unit, revamped associated facilities and
additional tanks for crude and finished products. The
project has been commissioned seven months ahead of schedule
at a cost of Rs 749 crore.
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Apollo
hikes tyre prices
New Delhi: Apollo Tyres has increased
the prices of its truck, light commercial vehicle and
farm tyres by 3.5 to 5 per cent. The net dealer price
of a truck tyre has been increased from Rs 8,000 to Rs
8,300 and that of an LCV tyre from Rs 3,700 to Rs 3,885.
The company said it has
been forced to raise prices because of a substantial increase
in the cost of raw materials.
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Sony
to reach out to semi-urban markets
New Delhi: Sony India is reorienting
its marketing strategy by reaching out to semi-urban markets
with its high-featured and low-priced hi fi music systems.
A new Sony range of four models in the price range between
Rs 13,490 and Rs 27,990 has been well received, says the
company.
The company also says it
will now concentrate more on its audio products.
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Timex
to buy back Tata shares
Bangalore: The Tata group's Titan Industries
and Timex Watches have arrived at an agreement by which
Timex will acquire the Tata group's shareholding in the
company at a price between Rs 29 and Rs 31 per share.
Timex shares are priced at around Rs 31 on the Bombay
Stock Exchange. The total cost of the acquisition will
work out to Rs 34 crore.
Titan Industries and other
Tata companies hold around 29 per cent of Timex Watches'
equity. The group's Rs 11.5 crore investment in the company
is expected to give a compounded yield of around 17 per
cent.
Titan and Timex severed
their collaborative relationship in December 1997.
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Datamatics
gets certification for HR process
Mumbai: Datamatics, a leading Indian
software training institution and information technology
solutions provider, says it has become the first company
in the world to achieve Level II of the People Capability
Maturity Model, the new quality benchmark to assess companies
for their human resource processes. The existing yardstick,
Capability Maturity Model, assesses only software processes.
The P-CMM model was authored
by Bill Curtis of Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie
Mellon University.
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Godrej
launches Y2C copiers
Mumbai: The Prima division of Godrej
& Boyce Mfg Co has launched the Y2C series of Rex
Rotary brand copiers of NRG International, a market leader
in Europe for digital copiers. The product range includes
five analog and seven digital models, including a digital
colour copier.
The launch marks Godrej's
entry into the reprographics market.
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Parekh
Platinum to set up Asia's largest gold refinery
Ahmedabad: The Rs 403-crore Parekh Platinum
of Mumbai is setting up a gold refinery project near Ahmedabad
at a cost of Rs 303 crore. When completed in October 2001,
this will be the largest gold refinery in Asia, with a
capacity to refine 150 tonnes of gold per annum. In addition
to the refinery, the company is also setting up a Rs 110-crore
gold jewellery plant with a capacity of 40 tonnes of jewellery
per annum.
The refinery project is
built in technical collaboration with Argon Heraeus of
Switzerland, formerly a wholly-owned subsidiary of the
Union Bank of Switzerland, which has now been taken over
by Commerzbank of Germany.
Parekh Platinum is in the
business of precious metals with industrial as well as
consumer applications.
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CMS
Generation plans O&M unit
New Delhi: CMS Generation Company is
setting up a wholly-owned operations and maintenance subsidiary,
CMS (India) Operations and Maintenance Company, with an
investment of $5 million.
The international power
major has informed the government that the investment
may not be made directly by the parent company but would
come through any of its 100 per cent subsidiaries around
the world. The initial focus of the company will be on
its lignite-based thermal power plant at Neyveli, Tamil
Nadu. The Foreign Investments Promotion Board has recently
approved the proposal.
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DaimlerChrysler
deal with workers to affect Ford
Detroit: DaimlerChrysler has signed a
labour agreement with United Auto Workers that bans the
spin-off of in-house supplier units. The agreement is
seen as a blow to rival Ford Motor Company.
DaimlerChrysler does not
have any pans to divest in-house parts operations in the
US and as such it does not lose anything by the agreement.
But the provision, included in the four-year, pattern-setting
agreement, matters a great deal to Ford. It affects its
plans to separate its Visteon Automotive Systems, which
is among Ford's top priorities.
United AutoWorkers is opposed
to the Visteon spin-off. The labour union is expected
to use the DaimlerChrysler pact as the basis for settlements
with Ford and General Motors, the other two members of
Detroit's Big 3 automakers.
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Ford
plans recast
New York: Ford Motor Company will announce
an organisational recast in November, says Business
Week.
The magazine said Ford's
new chief executive Jacques Nasser is planning to refine
the 'Ford 2000' reorganisation of his predecessor. It
said the company will reintroduce market focus in regions
"that will give Ford strong brands and more
appealing products".
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Fraud
at McGraw-Hill
London: McGraw-Hill is a victim of a
multi-million pound fraud at its European head office
in Maidenhead, The Financial Times said.
The newspaper said the company
had uncovered the fraud, understood to have been running
for several years. The potential losses could run to several
million pounds, the paper said. The employee allegedly
at the centre of the fraud had left the company, the paper
said quoting the New York office of the publishing company.
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Kobe
sells stake in plastic unit
Tokyo: Kobe Steel says it will sell its
85 per cent stake in Glastic, the US plastic company,
to the Crawford group, a private American investment company.
Glastic is no longer fitting
into Kobe's strategic objectives, the company said. The
balance of the stake in Glastic, held by Itochu, will
also be sold to Crawford. Glastic manufactures and markets
thermoset plastic components.
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