AirTel slashes SMS charges to 40 paise
Mumbai: AirTel, the cellular brand of Bharti group, has dropped SMS (text messages) charges to 40 paise, waived off rentals and airtime charges for roamers in western India, reduced call identification charges and has launched a Rate Saver plan that offers discounts if one talks more.

The AirTel move has come as a surprise in the telecom circles since leading operators had recently decided to raise and standardise SMS prices. The rates, across the GSM (global system of mobile communications) spectrum, is Re 1 per local SMS and Rs 2 for a national SMS.
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BSNL consolidates plan to lease bandwidth
New Delhi: After becoming the largest Internet service provider (ISP) in India with over 8 lakh subscribers, BSNL now plans to consolidate its position by aggressively pursuing its existing landline subscribers. Towards this end it has revived its plans to augment its bandwidth capacity from international gateways to the US.

Official sources were quoted as saying that the company has overtaken VSNL, Sify and MTNL to capture 21 per cent of the ISP market and plans are afoot to build up on this base. With a majority of its subscribers availing themselves of its post-paid caller line identification dial-up services, whereby the landline customers have to dial a specified number to surf the Net and get billed at the end of the month in their telephone bills, BSNL is now planning to make this facility available across the country, they said.
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NEI gets Rs 4-crore order from US company
Mumbai: National Engineering Industries Ltd (NEI), a GP-CK Birla group company, has announced that it has bagged an export order worth Rs 4 crore from a US major, Brenco.

A technical partner of NEI, Brenco will outsource 7,000 units of 6X11 cartridge taper roller bearing (CTRB) from NEI by January. The business potential of this deal would increase to Rs 15 crore within one year.
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Bharat Forge to raise Rs 350 crore for expansion
Mumbai: The board of Bharat Forge Ltd (BFL) has approved raising long-term resources of up to Rs 350 crore, subject to other requisite clearances. "The structure to be used for the said funding will be decided in due course," the company said, though a separate communiqué to the BSE described the route as "by issue of appropriate securities."

According to the statement, the funds would be used for expansion of BFL's forging and machining capacity at Mundhwa, Pune. It is setting up a machining facility for heavy-duty crankshafts with a capacity of 2 lakh pieces per year.
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Goodricke to sell off unviable tea estates
Kolkata: The Goodricke group is recasting its operations in Darjeeling by selling off unviable tea estates and simultaneously trying to acquire good tea gardens. Recently, the company sold four of its 13 estates in Darjeeling to the city-based Sampad Vikas of the Ambootia group and is further considering the sale of two more tea gardens.

The four gardens sold off by Goodricke were held through its wholly owned subsidiary called Tiru Tea. Apart from these four, Tiru Tea still owns another four gardens in Darjeeling. K S David, managing director, Goodricke, said: "These gardens were low-yielding ones and were constantly failing to meet the high standards that we follow in Goodricke. So, for some time now, we have been considering hiving off these gardens."
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GG Auto board considers US company buyout
Mumbai: GG Automotive Gears, which informed the BSE on Tuesday about ongoing negotiations to acquire a US company, has said that its board will meet on 18 December to consider carrying out a due diligence. The US firm is involved in manufacturing high precision custom gears and planetary gear systems. In a statement to the BSE, GG Automotive said its scheduled board meeting will consider the acquisition and the raising of resources through equity, quasi-equity or debentures either on rights basis or private placement basis.

The board will further consider appointing a sub-committee to carry out the due diligence and necessary formalities for acquisition. It will also look into a proposal to delist its shares from bourses at Indore, Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Chennai, besides fixing a date for an EGM of shareholders for approvals on the above.
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Race to acquire Mid-Day hots up
Mumbai: Reports say that Bennett, Coleman & Co, publishers of the Times of India, the KK Birla-owned Hindustan Times, the Pune-based Sakaal group and another leading regional newspaper company are understood to have bid for a majority stake in Mid-Day Multimedia, the Mid-Day group's holding company for newspapers, radio channels and outdoor media.

The Mid-Day group has opened the bids it had received for the equity. But sources close to the development were quoted as saying that some of the bids were complex, and sought not a majority stake but just some of the businesses Mid-Day controlled. "Some of the bids by Indian media players have come in as part of a consortium of domestic as well as international private equity funds. There are proposals for acquiring a minority as well as a majority stake, besides merger proposals." While the group is yet to take a call on the exact extent of equity dilution, the decision will primarily depend on the valuation and the nature of sale.
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Glaxo writes down Viva, Maltova value
New Delhi: GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare has written down the value of Maltova and Viva, the brands it bought from Jagatjit Industries in 2000, by Rs 31.62 crore. Instead of Rs 59.64 crore, these brands are now valued at Rs 28.02 crore in the company's balance sheet.

"In line with the current sales projection for these brands and in accordance with good accounting principles, the company has decided to write down the value of Viva and Maltova in its balance sheet to reflect their true value to the company," GlaxoSmithKline informed the BSE.
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