Govt signs pact with Reliance consortium
New Delhi: The government has signed a production sharing contract (PSC) with a consortium comprising Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation-Oil India Ltd.

The PSC is for a block located in the off-shore area off the coast of Gujarat-Kutch, spanning 5,725 kms which will be explored by RIL.

RIL would drill one well in exploration Phase 1 with an investment of about Rs 47 which could go up depending upon the result of this initial minimum exploration commitment.

The government has so far signed 100 contracts- 74 contracts for exploration blocks and 26 contracts for the development of discovered fields - since 1992.
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DCA to probe Reliance group companies
Mumbai: The government has widened the scope of its investigations into Reliance Petroleum Ltd (RPL) to include other group companies -Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd (RIIL) Reliance Enterprises Ltd, Reliance Filaments Ltd and Lavanya Holdings & Trading Pvt Ltd.

Accordingly, the department of company affairs will scrutinize books of accounts of all these companies to verify if the Reliance Filaments and Reliance Enterprises had used Reliance Petroleum funds to rig the prices of shares of Reliace Industries and other group companies.

The investigation will also ascertain whether RIL, RIIL and Lavanaya Holdings & Trading had the technical know-how and professional expertise to execute the RPL refinery project.

A Reliance spokesperson, however, denied any knowledge of the probe.

The spokesperson blamed corporate rivalry for a "campaign of disinformation".
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Indya.com closes net2travel.com
New Delhi: Bangalore-based indya.com is winding up its online travel operations, net2travel.com which it had acquired last year. Indya.com has laid off 30 employees of net2travel.

Indya.com believed in the business and supported net2travel.com all along for eight months. But its performance was not quite up to Indyas expectations and therefore did not justify any further investments, indya.com CEO Sunil Lulla told the press.
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Ranbaxy ropes in Glaxo for co-marketing 
Mumbai: Ranbaxy Laboratories has tied up with Glaxo India for co-marketing of the new product, ciprofloxacin OD, to be launched shortly.

Ranbaxy Laboratories CEO D S Brar disclosed this while addressing a seminar here.

Ranbaxy will continue to be single supplier of the product to Cipla as well as Glaxo. The pricing of the product, though yet to be decided, would be more-or-less identical.

Ranbaxy also expects to launch in olanzipine OD in India by the year-end and the company may examine the option of following a similar alliance pattern. The company would be launching its first branded product in the US market by 2004, even as Ranbaxy is expected to receive US FDA approval for cefuroxime axetil after a US appeals court vacated a preliminary injunction granted to GlaxoSmithKline by a district court.
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Cost overrun hits GACL plant
Mumbai : The upcoming greenfield plant of Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd (GACL) at Chandrapur in Maharashtra has witnessed a cost escalation of Rs 75 crore. The project. cost, which was originally estimated at Rs 600 crore, will now stand at Rs 675 crore, according to the companys annual report.

The new plant, Maratha Cement Works, is expected to be commissioned in December 2001. GACL has attributed the cost over-run to some conceptual changes in the project, as well as additional infrastructure developing costs like roads, water pipelines, railway sidings.

GACL is also putting up a 40-MW thermal captive power plant, along with the cement plant. GACLs capacity currently stands at 7 mt which will increase to 9 mt with the commissioning of the Chandrapur plant.
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Cambridge Enterprises to close half its production units
Mumbai: Mens apparel-making Cambridge Enterprises is planning to close half of its s manufacturing units by next year to save on labour costs. The cost cut will enable the company to invest in new designs, and research and development for its ready-to-wear apparels next year.

The company is sourcing funds from internal accruals and claims to be open to seeking a strategic investment partner or going public to fuel further expansion. It invests three per cent of its annual turnover on research and development every year.

The company plans to set up an exclusive Cambridge megastore of apparels for men, women and kids in Mumbai. It has begun market research for this.
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Merc to roll out M-class vehicles
Bangalore: Mercedes Benz is planning to roll out the 2001 version of M-class sports utility vehicle in India with a price tag of about Rs 40 lakh.

The C-class sporty coupe, which was rolled out in April this year in the world market, may also hit the Indian roads sometime next year.

At least four versions of the M-class, automatic and manual transmission with petrol engine and two others with diesel engine, are undergoing tests in Pune, and should be out very soon.

The company has imported about 40 cars of different classes into India based on customer demand during the first eight months of this year. It plans to import a total of 100 this year.
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BP told to make open offer for Foseco India
Mumbai: The securities appellate tribunal has upheld the Sebi order asking BP and Foseco to make a public announcment to acquire Foseco India with March 14, 2000, as a relevant date to compute price and pay 15 per cent interest on the offer price to shareholders.

The tribunal said the capital market regulator should work out the timeframe considering the regulatory provisions and the facts relevant to the case.

Foseco India had come under the control of BP following the takeover of Burmah Castrol, parent company of Foseco and Foseco India is a subsidiary of Foseco Plc.
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French firm not to acquire Kolkata hotel
Kolkata: A French firm has dropped its plan to acquire the citys oldest hotel because of stiff opposition from the workers. West Bengal government has been negotiating with Accor Asia Pacific of France for leasing out the state-run Great Eastern Hotel.

Every time the deal was about to be finalised, the move faced stiff opposition from the hotel employees. Exasperated, the French firm has given up its plan to acquire the hotel.
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Air Sahara, Lufthansa tie up
New Delhi: Air Sahara and Lufthansa Airlines' wholly-owned subsidiary have entered into a major technical support tie-up to launch feeder services by the year-end.

"We have entered into a long-term technical support agreement with Lufthansa technik for engine maintenance and support in air frame, auxilliary power units and all aircraft rotable spare parts," Air Sahara CEO Uttam K Bose said.

He said the company was in talks with Lufthansa in other areas including marketing and frequent flyer programme which was likely to be finalised shortly.

He said three new dry-leased aircraft would be inducted between October and December this year, with which the airline would connect all metro cities and increase frequency between Mumbai and Delhi by introducing five flights a day.

The airline now has a fleet of seven boeing 737 aircraft and four helicopters.

Air Sahara would also start e-ticketing from October through its Web site.

"We also plan to start a major ticketing facility through the mobile telephone SMS service. This would be the first of its kind in the world," he said.
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Yahoo! messenger for Orange users
Mumbai: Hutchison Max Telecom, an Orange cellular service provider, has tied up with Yahoo! India to provide an online Yahoo! messenger service in its four circles in the country.

Orange users can now link with the messenger service by providing their Yahoo! id, Hutchison-Orange chief executive officer, Sandip Das, told reporters here.

Yahoo! India head, Deepak Chandnani, said India was the second country after Singapore where Yahoo! messenger for SMS was being launched.

The dotcom's user-base in the country was expanding with the registration touching 1.44 crore users, Chandnani added.

This facility would be available to 9 lakh Orange customers in the four circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat and Kolkata, Das said.

He said Orange's short messeging service was handling 6 lakh transactions per day and revenues were close to Rs 6 lakh per day.
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Titagarh seeks partner for paper mills
Kolkata: Titagarh Industries Ltd (TIL), a profit-making company engaged in the manufacture of steel and paper products, proposes to trifurcate its existing business into separate companies with the objective of roping in a partner for the companys two paper mills in West Bengal.

While the steel division of TIL, which manufactures high-speed steel-cast bogies and automatic centre buffer couples for the Railways and high-quality steel castings for defence, shipping and mining is doing well, the paper mills have become a liability to the company.

This is because none of the mills could be fully revived owing to the company's inability to mop up funds from the depressed capital market through the equity issue route. The company now wants to separate the paper mills from the common entity with a view to attracting investment from prospective partners.

The paper mill No. 1, located at Titagarh, about 30 km from the city, has an annual installed capacity of 16,000 tonnes of writing and printing paper. The management proposes to install a 99,000-tonne per annum (tpa) second-hand newsprint manufacturing plant for which it intends to induct a joint venture partner who could bring in an investment of about Rs 85 crores.
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