Shaw Wallace in restructuring mould
New Delhi: The Shaw Wallace group has decided to split off its liquor and beer businesses into two separate subsidiaries even as it is looking for a tie-up with a foreign brewer. 

The company has charted global consultants McKinsey & Co to draw up strategies for its core business and to suggest ways to reduce costs.

The company is setting up four green field breweries one each in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Goa at an investment of Rs 100 crore.

It is also expanding capacity of its four major breweries including Skol Breweries, Uran (Maharashtra), Sica Breweries, Pondicherry, Charminar Breweries, Hyderabad and Haryana Breweries, Sonepat (Haryana).
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Orchid Chemicals to acquire Medicorp Tech
Chennai: The Chennai-based Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, a cephalosporin drug maker has decided to acquire the Secunderabad-based Medicorp Technologies.

Orchid has aggressive plans to become a significant player in both bulk drugs and formulations market. The company had acquired the Aurangabad facility of Ajantha Pharma recently.

Medicorp, promoted by the Shriram group, is a bulk drug manufacturer which has received approval from the US-Federal Drug Agency.

Medicorp had recorded a net loss of Rs 3 crore on a turnover of Rs 32 crore for the year ended March 2001, while Orchid had reported a net profit of Rs 36.46 crore on a turnover of Rs 371.24 crore for the same period.
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Bharti restructures fixed line business
New Delhi: Bharti Enterprises has set up a new division, Infotel leaders, which will bring under its umbrella the company's basic telephony, broadband and domestic long distance businesses.

This will be distinct from the `mobility leaders' division, which will focus on cellular business, aimed primarily at the consumer market.

Announcing the restructure, Bharti said that it would launch a new brand for fixed line services.

The restructuring follows Bharti's winning bids in eight telecom areas for providing cellphone services and its plans to launch basic phone services in Haryana, Karnataka, Delhi and Tamil Nadu by the year end, along with DLD operations.

The Infotel leaders, integrating fixed line, broadband and DLD operations, will be headed by Badri Agarwal as president.

Bharti's fixed line operations will be divided into North and South regions, each headed by an executive director, to be appointed after the new businesses achieve operational stability.

The northern region would comprise of Delhi, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh and the southern region would comprise of the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu operations.

The Infotel leaders, said Bharti in a statement, would focus on providing access through various technologies especially for the business customer.
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Goodricke to say good bye
Kolkata: Goodricke group, employing nearly 35,000 people in tea gardens spread over Darjeeling, Dooars and Assam, is likely to close its operations in West Bengal following labour trouble, high costs and low returns.

The Khaitans, promoters of Goodricke had earlier sold their estates in Darjeeling where the company employed over 16,000 workers. The prices of Darjeeling tea have crashed following the cloning of its variety by gardens in Nepal.

Goodricke owns 14 tea gardens, some of which produce finest quality tea much sought after in UK.

The group also owns 12 gardens in the Dooars and 10 in Assam.

The group is seriously considering closing shop in West Bengal because of falling prices of tea and high cost of product on account of increasing wages. "Tea prices have stagnated and production declined by nearly 50 per cent in two decades. Wages continue to increase by 10-11 per cent every year despite a five per cent inflation. Against the 8.5 per cent bonus stipulated in the Bonus Act, the industry has to pay 20 per cent. This is ridiculous," a company spokesman said.

While the average labour cost in Darjeeling is Rs 40 per employee, subsidies in housing, food, medical facilities and education lead to nearly double that per person. In fact, Goodricke still offers wheat at 50 paise a kg and rice at 45 paise a kg to garden workers.
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33 per cent FII holding in Hughes-Tata merged entity
Mumbai: The merged entity of Hughes Telecom and Tata Teleservices has almost finalized its equity structure with foreign holding pegged at 33 per cent.

Ispat Industries and the public are slated to hold 27 per cent and the remaining 40 per cent will be with Tata Teleservices.

The merged entity is being valued at Rs 5,500 crore, with Hughes Telecom's investment valued at Rs 3,500 and Tata Teleservices' at Rs 2,000 crore.

Foreign equity stake holders in the merged entity include Hughes Networks and ALLtel Corporation of the US and FIIs like the Singapore government, who had participated in the Hughes Telecom IPO in 1999.

Hughes Tele.com, with 90,000 subscribers, has invested around Rs 3,500 crore in Maharashtra, while the Tatas' investment is pegged at Rs 2,000 crore in Andhra Pradesh. The Tatas have close to 70,000 subscribers.
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Air-India to hive off hotels
New Delhi: The government started the process of hiving off Hotel Corporation of India (HCI) from the parent company Air-India. HCI will be placed under the control of the ministry of civil aviation.

Meanwhile, there are no bidders left for Indian Airlines with both the shortlisted bidders Hindujas and Videocon withdrawing. Tatas, the sole bidder for Air-India, is yet to communicate their decision on the bid after withdrawal of its consortium partner Singapore Airline from the race.
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Court restricts Samsung campaign
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has restrained Samsung Electronics from pulishing or circulating in any form "libelous material" against LG which alleged that it was being defamed by the rival company.

LG had filed a suit alleging that Samsung was causing damage to its business interests by publishing and circulating defamatory material through e-mail to all channels in the trade including the distributors and the dealers of electronic goods.

Directing Samusung Electronics to file a reply within two weeks Justice A K Sikri restrained the company from publishing and circulating any libelous material anywhere and by any means or media including the electronic mail.

Samsung's lawyer J R Midha, meanwhile, gave an undertaking to the court that "the company would not publish or circulate any such e-mails."
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Govt to infuse Rs 1000 crore in IFCI
New Delhi: Industrial Finance Corporation of India chairman P V Narasimham has assured the shareholders that the Rs 1,000 crore fund infusion from government and stake holders would enable the FI to mobilise more resources from the market in the coming months.

At the annual general meeting, Narasimham said infusion of additional capital would improve the capital adequacy ratio to a comfortable level of 10.4 per cent as against the present requirement of 9.0 per cent while reducing the debt-equity ratio.

"This infusion of new equity capital would help to generate and mobilise more resources in the form of debt that can be used for lending to top-quality corporate borrowers," he said.

The government agreed to infuse Rs 400 crore while stake holders IDBI, LIC, GIC and SBI, would bring in another Rs 600 crore by way of 20-year convertible debentures.
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CPCL to pay 25 per cent dividend
Chennai: The Chennai Petroleum Corporation has declared a dividend of 25 per cent for the year 2000-01.

According to a press release the company's turnover during the year stood at Rs 7,132.62 crore and profit after tax Rs 122.43 crore.

The release said that CPCL would be investing around rs 2500 crore on expanding and modernising its refineries at manali and panangudi and they would be geared up to produce environement friendly fuels meeting the Euro II/Bharath 2005 specifications.

The company was also planning to invest about Rs 300 crore on joint venture projects in power generation at Manali and a product pipeline project.
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Ericsson hopes to get $250 m BSNL order
New Delhi: Leading global telecoms instrument maker Ericsson is expected to bag an order of up to $250 million to supply GSM mobile equipment telecom giant Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).

Ericsson Communications, a fully-owned subsidiary of Sweden's L.M. Ericsson, the world's No 1 supplier of wireless network equipment and No 3 mobile phone maker, is reported to have quoted the lowest price in the tenders floated by state-owned BSNL for equipment to set up mobile networks in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

The five-year contract, to be executed within eight months of signing, is for supplying core GSM infrastructure and the billing and customer care system.

The tender involved setting up a network with a capacity of 500,000 subscribers in the states of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Assam and other North-Eastern states.

The tender for north India covering the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir involves a total network capacity of a 1.1 million subscribers.

Ericsson has offered to set up the network in eastern India for Rs 5.08 billion and one in the north for Rs 6.74 billion.

BSNL has already awarded the equipment contract for western India to a consortium comprising Lucent Technologies and state-run telecoms gear manufacturer ITI, and for the southern region to US-based wireless technology giant Motorola.
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Coats develops new thread for ColorPlus
Bangalore: Coats India, the thread division of Madura Coats Limited, a Rs 750 crore textile major, has developed a special thread called "KobanPlus" exclusively for ColorPlus, the leading "smart casuals" brand in the country.

Announcing this at a press conference, ColorPlus Fashions managing director Rajendra Mudaliar said the thread currently being introduced for their premium washed cotton chinos, will soon be used in their other other clothing products by end of this year in a phased manner.

The thread has been developed by Coats in-house in about two months. The ColorPlus will initiallly use the new thread for manufacturing its trousers.

Mr Ashok Mathur, president, Coats India, said the new thread was developed in India with technical inputs from Coats Technology Centre at Newton Mearns, Scotland and ColorPlus manufacturing facilities in Chennai.
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Zee to expand business in Pakistan
New Delhi: The Zee Network is planning to strengthen its broadcasting business in Pakistan. A delegation of Zee was in Pakistan recently for this purpose. The delegation included group CEO (broadcasting) Sandeep Goyal and director (marketing) Partha Pratim Sinha.

"We are interested in the Pakistan market. We already have a distributor in place and have a strong presence there," Mr. Sinha said adding that the network wanted to understand Pakistani consumers preferences.

Zee is primarily focussing on three channels in Pakistan - Zee TV, Zee Movies and Zee MGM.
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HC directs Bajaj Auto to reinstate 1,197 staff
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has asked Bajaj Auto to reinstate 1,197 temporary workers who were earlier retrenched from its Waluj factory in Aurangabad.

The workers, on their part, had moved court against the companys decision in January this year. When contacted, Bajaj Auto executive director Madhur Bajaj said, "We have been given a months time to appeal in the Supreme Court. We will fight till we have exhausted all options." The impact of this issue will be felt across the entire Indian industry as there are many other manufacturers who employ temporary workers, he said. It also comes at a time when the country is bringing in labour reforms, he added.

Over 1,400 employees at the Waluj plant had opted for the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) which was offered across management, supervisor and workmen level. The retrenchment of the temporary staff was said to be a part of the on-going rationalisation process at the Waluj plant, which was shut due to labour trouble some years ago.
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Penegra goes pink
New Delhi: Zydus Cadila Healthcare Ltd has changed the colour of Penegra, the Indian variety of potency drug, to red so that it is not confused with Pfizers internationally known Viagra which comes in blue diamond shape.

Zydus Cadila was compelled to change the colour of the drug following filing of a case of Pfizer in the Delhi high court. Though it does not have presence in the Indian market, the pharma MNC challenged the colour, shape and size of the other brands of the potency drug saying these resemble very closely to Viagra.

After changing the colour of its product, Zydus Cadila resumed its sales. Penegra is a market leader with a share of 33 per cent and sales averaging Rs 64 lakh per month.
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Zodiac hikes stake in Shoppers' Stop
Mumbai: Zodiac Group has raised its stake in the retail chain Shoppers' Stop to approximately 7.5 per cent, from the 1 per cent it held on March 31, 2000.

The group, which is primarily a textile manufacturer, has consolidated its holding in the Raheja-promoted retail chain over the last few months by purchasing stakes held by a few mutual funds.
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NIIT, iFlex to partner Microsofts .Net programme
New Delhi: NIIT and iFlex have been selected by Microsoft Corp in its much-talked about worldwide .Net partnership programme to develop solutions using Visual Studio.Net.

There are only four more Asian companies among 70 selected worldwide from various countries and will be supported by Microsofts technical team at Redmond and India.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was the first to make it to the software giants Redmond-based labs to jointly develop a product on its much-hyped .Net platform along with Motorola, Merrill Lynch, National Citicorp and Bridge Information.

While iFlex is developing a Commodity Exchange application, NIIT will work on e-procurement .Net solutions.

Iflex s commodity exchange, named ComEx, will allow two parties on a B2B exchange to conduct secure transactions using a third party verification web service.

NIITs e-procurement .Net solution is aimed at companies setting up public or private marketplaces to ad-dress enterprise-wide purchasing needs. These applications are being created using Micro-soft s .Net architecture and technologies.
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UTI holdings block EILs disinvestment
New Delhi:  Engineers India Ltds (EIL) is unable disinvest because it has invested Rs 187 crore in the units of Unit Trust of India which "cannot be realised."

EIL  told the petroleum ministry, which is the administrative ministry for EIL, that it has "considerable" receivables from other public sector undertakings and some private firms.

This is expected to have a major impact on the valuation of EIL's shares which the government wants to disinvest in the current fiscal.

The cabinet had approved restructuring of EIL's equity holding, including strategic sale of 26 per cent of government equity.

However, the decision on implementing the Cabinet order has been deferred till the ministry finalises its plan for total restructuring of the company. 
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Rallis earmarks  Rs 133 for diversification Mumbai: Rallis India, the agrochemicals arm of the Tata group, has earmarked Rs 133 crore it had realized from the sale of real estate property for future diversifications.

The entire amount will be kept in a trust under the direct supervision of the company's board of directors. Part of the amount may be invested in biotechnology, informed sources said.

The company is exploring the possibility of organic growth through in-house research or acquisitions and even strategic alliances with multinationals. Investments could also be made in farm management services and fertilisers.

Addressing the annual general meeting of the company, Rallis chairman Freddie Mehta said: "Operations of the company's subsidiary Siris India was being shut down from June 1 as the net worth was completely eroded."

Rallis is merging five of its subsidiaries with itself, but the Siris was left out of the consolidation process.

Around 16 per cent of Siris' equity was owned by other Tata group companies, which has now been bought back by Rallis for Rs 2.8 crore. 
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JK Corp cuts debt
New Delhi: J K Corporation has completed its debt and business restructuring which involves transfer of J K Paper Mills to another group company, Central Pulp Mills, and pared off 55 per cent of its debt burden of Rs 1,500 crore.

As part of the debt restructuring exercise, J K Corporation reduced its debt burden to Rs 700 crore from Rs 1,500 crore earlier through rescheduling loans and conversion of debt into equity-related instruments.

The interest burden on the company has also come down without the creditors having to write off any part of their exposure in the company, a company release said here.

J K Corporation, which divested its polyester business earlier, would now focus on cement and paper businesses.

The company has a cement plant at Sirohi in Rajasthan with a 2.2 million tonne per annum (tpa) capacity, and the restructuring would take up the capacity of Central Pulp Mills to 1,50,000 tpa.

"We have been a key player in cement and paper, and have been investing consistently in terms of capacity enhancement, infrastructure and market development. With the restructuring, we hope to emerge even stronger and a focused long-term player," J K Corporation chairman and managing director Hari Shankar Singhania was quoted in the release.

With the merger, Central Pulp Mills has become one of the largest paper companies in India with production units in Orissa and Gujarat, and a nationwide distribution network.

"With this consolidation, Central Pulp will be financially strong with healthy cash flows," the release said.