ICICI to reduce number of subsidiaries
Mumbai - ICICI Ltd is reducing the number of its subsidiaries from the present 21-plus to around 12 in its efforts to turn into a universal bank in a short period of 12-18 months.
ICICI is also planning to ask for certain concessions from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) while becoming a universal bank and will initiated these shortly.
It is estimated that ICICI would require between Rs 18,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore to meet its regulatory requirements for complying with the cash reserve ratio (CRR) and statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) norms when it turns into a bank. ICICI managing director and CEO KV Kamath said ICICI had already moved ahead on many points in its bid to provide a basic infrastructure to its universal banking dream. For instance, it has already brought in fresh capital to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore and has provided aggressively to clean up the balance sheet and also diversify the portfolio. Besides, ICICIs cutting-edge technology has also been used to empower the marketing efforts to push the brand.

He said the phrase universal banking has been interpreted by many people in many ways and made into an issue. There is no issue, really. The way we see it, it is the ability to conduct a host of banking activities under one roof with one brand, said Mr Kamath.
ICICI has subsidiaries like I-Sec, ICICI Personal Finance, ICICI Home Finance, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, ICICI Web Trade and many others for a range of financial services.
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Piaggio reenters India as Piaggio India; plans to set up 2-wheeler plant
Mumbai - Piaggio is reentering the Indian two-wheelers market through its wholly owned subsidiary, Piaggio India, two years after its controversial exit from the Singhanias-controlled LML, Piaggio. The Italian scooters transnational is now drawing up plans to set up a greenfield manufacturing unit and a top source in the company said that the first two-wheeler from the company could roll out in a years time.
Piaggio India is understood to be finalising plans for the greenfield unit and is also in the process of appointing vendors and dealers for the venture.
This is Piaggios second serious attempt to make a re-entry into India, and follows the recent abortive attempt to acquire the governments stake in Scooters India.
Piaggios interest in India is believed to be due to the mammoth size of the domestic two-wheeler market.
Piaggio exited India in November 1999 after selling its 23.6 per cent equity in LML for Rs 13.50 crore, after a bitter protracted battle in the courts with the Singhanias.
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Tatas may enter into talks with Delta-Air France consortium
Mumbai - With Singapore Airlines out of the Air India disinvestment race, the Tatas may initiate a dialogue with Delta Airlines and Air France for a possible tie-up. Delta and Air France were keen on Air India initially and had formed a consortiumbut later pulled out, as they could not find a suitable local partner.
With SIA withdrawing its offer, the Tatas are now "hunting for an airline that does not have a significant presence in India.
The partner should also have recorded a good financial performance despite the slowdown in the aviation industry and is in a position to invest in the cash-strapped national carrier", another Tata insider said.
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Shaw Wallace winding up 2 arms
Mumbai - The Manu Chhabria group is winding up two business subsidiaries -- Gandhinagar Electronics (formerly Shaw Wallace Electronics) and erstwhile lightings bluechip Genelac of Shaw Wallace Ltd.
Both companies had run into financial strife in the early 1990s after defaulting on loans to its banking consortium, as a result of which lenders took a decision to stop sanctioning fresh loans to the entire group.
Gandhinagar Electronics, which saw a change in name to de-link it from the Chhabria group, was referred to the Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) two years back. Thereafter, BIFR directed ICICI to advertise for a change of promoter. However, ICICI had found no takers for the electronics companies, thereby forcing it to recommend winding up operations and liquidating the company. Gandhinagar Electronics had posted losses of Rs 2.24 crore during 1999-2000, taking its accumulated losses to Rs 30.77 crore.
While Gandhinagar Electronics is an electronics supplier to television manufacturers, Genelac was into lighting equipment.
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LIC planning to take strategic stakes in banks
Mumbai - Life Insurance Corporation, LIC, may acquire strategic stakes in banks and institutions as an alternative to either diversifying into new areas or acquiring new businesses.
LIC chairman GN Bajapi said LIC has decided to adopt the third alternative that of acquiring strategic stakes in solid institutions. With this can leverage their strengths at the same time we are not burdened with their legacies, he said.
LIC is also looking at having arms in the UK and the US for which the corporation is seeking a foreign partner.
Though initially the corporation would look at the non-resident Indian business, but does not intend to confine its business to the Indian community.
In India, the corporation has so far acquired a 27 per cent stake in Corporation Bank and holds 12 per cent in Oriental Bank of Commerce.
Incidentally, LICs holding in the countrys largest bank State Bank of India has also crept up to 6 per cent, making it the largest domestic institutional investor in the bank.
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Tata Finance to sell stake in subsidiaries
Mumbai - The Tatas are planning to sell Tata Finances equity holdings in its six subsidiariesTata TD Waterhouse Securities Ltd, Tata Finance Merchant Bankers Ltd, Tata Finance Amex Ltd, TT Forex Ltd, Tata Home Finance Ltd and Tata Share Registry Ltd.
Recently, the Tatas sold their stake in one of their subsidiaries, Niskalp Investment & Trading Company Ltd.
The Tatas are open to the idea of selling the stakes to other Tata companies or to companies outside the Tata group and hope to generate over Rs 100 crore for Tata Finance by doing so.
An equal amount is to be generated by selling real estate sitting on the Tata Finance books.

The proposal is but one of a three-pronged strategy to restructure the beleaguered Rs 2,800 crore Tata Finance which is suffering from an acute liquidity strain, triggered by a severe asset-liability mismatch and the inability of its former subsidiary, Niskalp Investment & Trading Ltd, to repay Rs 500 crore worth of ICDs.
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Avery (I) shuts down Kolkata unit
Mumbai - Weighing equipment manufacturer Avery India Ltd, which made a loss of Rs 11 crore in year 2000, the first in its 90 years of operations here, plans to close down its Kolkata unit. This comes in the second phase of restructuring undertaken by the company to streamline its operations and identifying high margin segments.
In the first phase, the company undertook manpower rationalisation by floating a voluntary retirement scheme for its employees.
From a work force of 1,900, the manpower was scaled down to 1,640 at a cost of Rs 10 crore funded mostly through internal accruals.
A company source said that as a part of the restructuring exercise Avery is exiting from low-end products including mechanical weighing scales, retail and wholesale.
The Kolkata factory of Avery is basically a mechanical assembly line operation. Although there is still a market for the mechanical scales, it is not viable for Avery to compete in the industry where a majority of the market has been encroached upon by the unorganised sector.

The company anticipates that down the line, the sales will further fall and the Kolkata plant will makes further losses every year and it is rational in this light to close down the unit, he said.
Avery India is a subsidiary of Avery Berkel UK and Weigh Tronix of USA has been on the forefront of the weighing machine in India for a close to a century.
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Innovation centres for home networks from Wipro
Mumbai - Wipro is planning to set up innovation centres based on core technology and intends to fund development of core technology through a quasi-venture capital route.
Wipro will fund those projects that show potential of viable revenues, either through licensing or outright sale of technology.
Officials say, the company has reached a stage where it can develop core technology, the soft cores in the telecom arena that can help vendors in taking a quantum leap in their future offerings.
Two areas have been identified two areas for developing these soft cores: edge routers in enterprise networks and home networks.
The company has two divisions telecom & internetworking and embedded & Internet access devices that will focus on these two areas, respectively. "We want to develop products that can be licensed out in the telecom service provider or vendors," says Vijaya Kumar I, head technology group, Telecom and Internetworking, Wipro Technologies.A "substantial" portion of its current manpower devoted to R&D projects will be employed in it.

Though the company officials are wary of giving an exact number, it is learnt that an entire building has been earmarked for the endeavour. Wipro currently employs around 5,500 people doing core technology product projects within Wipro Technologies.

Vijaya Kumar says,"We want to graduate from doing core projects for telecom companies to developing technology that will be used in their future products." Therefore, our first product will focus on the edge router in the enterprise space as a solution for the same.Wipro has a very strong base in telecom equipment vendor space and works for almost every telecom equipment vendor in the world barring Siemens. Siemens has its own development center in Bangalore and does not outsource its R&D development work.
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Hyundai India sales up in 2^nd Quarter
New Delhi - Hyundai Motors India has announced a 9 per cent increase in sales in the April-August period with 39,013 units being sold during the first five months of the current fiscal against 35,865 units in the corresponding period last year.
"Though the market in general has not shown an upswing, Hyundai's car sales have increased due to introduction of feature rich products, superior quality and after sales service," said Y S Kim, managing director, Hyundai India.
There had been a 13 per cent increase in its car sales in August this year to 8,241 units compared to 7,285 units in the corresponding period last year.
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Pepsis bottling man is new franchisee of Pizza Huts in North
New Delhi - Ravi Jaipuria, the main bottling agent of Pepsi India is a busy man these days. He is acquiring all of Speciality Restaurants Pizza Hut outlets in India in an all-cash transaction the value of which lies in the range of Rs 9-12 crore.
Tricon Restaurants International, part of Pepsico International, owns Pizza Hut, while Speciality Restaurants is promoted by one of the owners of Milkfood, owned by the Jaiswals of Jagatjit Industries.
Speciality Restaurants till now was the franchisee of Pizza Hut, in Delhi and Chandigarh but has now been acquired by Devyani International, a Jaipuria Group company, which has thus emerged as the sole Pizza Hut franchisee in north India.
At present, Jaipuria owns nine Pizza Hut outlets in Delhi, Jaipur, Agra and Noida. According to company insiders, he plans to open another six outlets in the coming year. With the acquisition of Milkfoods four outlets in Connaught Place, Greater Kailash, Basant Lok and Chandigarh, Jaipuria will own 19 Pizza Hut outlets by next year.
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Samsung India to launch 18 products this year
New Delhi - Samsung Electronics India Information and Telecommunication Ltd (SEIIT), the wholly owned information technology and telecom subsidiary of Samsung Electronics of Korea, will launch as many as 18 new products and extend its current range of IT and telecom products by December this year.
On the anvil are products like PC notebooks, MP3 players over the next few months. Samsung will also expand its existing product range of LCD monitors, Hard Disk Drives (HDD), Optical Disk Drives (ODD), laser printers and cellular phones to take advantage of the growing demand for these products in this country.
SEIIT has also commissioned its colour monitor plant at Noida with an installed capacity of one million monitors and is exploring the possibility of exporting colour monitors from India.
SEIIT, which commands a 56 per cent colour monitor market share, is now looking at enhancing the capacity further by three million monitors to four million monitors by 2005 involving a fresh investment to the tune of $25 million.
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Hutch, BPL to cut rates on cell-to-cell calls
Mumbai - The Mumbai operators, Hutchison, owner of Orange brand and BPL Mobile are thinking of the possibility of offering a lower tariff on calls made from one mobile to another. The thinking is that while the move will enable greater usage of cellular phones, from the cellular operators point of view, there will be money to be made from both outgoing and incoming calls.
Currently, a call made from a cellular phone to a fixed line phone, earns the cellular operator the billing for the outgoing call while it gets nothing for the incoming call on the fixed line network. If more calls are made from a mobile to mobile, then the cellular operators would make money on both the outgoing and incoming calls.
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AmEx to exit corporate banking in India
Mumbai - American Express Bank is exiting the corporate banking business in India and is planning to redeploy its resources in expanding its retail business here.
Over the next 12 months, the bank will run down its wholesale portfolio and will exit from the corporate banking business by June 2002.
AmEx Bank performed very poorly in the year ended March 31, 2001, largely due to sticky loans to the corporate sector. It provided Rs 50.3 crore towards provisions for doubtful advances and receivables in 2001-02, sharply higher than the Rs 15.3-crore provided for in the previous year ending 2001-02 with a net loss of Rs 22.5 crore. This compares with a net profit of Rs 27.7 crore in the previous year. Net non-performing assets were also up sharply to 6.2 per cent from 4.32 per cent in the previous year.
Two senior officials at the banks corporate credit and trade finance operations are understood to have put in their papers.

However, the personal financial services business and the TRS business of the bank have been doing well. While AmEx payment services and travel services businesses fall under TRS, retail banking services fall under the PFS business.
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