Crisil acquires 9 per cent stake in CICRA
Mumbai: CRISIL, the rating agency, has announced the acquisition of nine per cent equity stake in the Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Agency Ltd. Crisil has paid $300,000 for the acquisition.The Caribbean agency offers rating and other services to 19 countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Suriname and others, said a Crisil release.
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Grand Hyatt opens in Mumbai
Mumbai: The Grand Hyatt, a Rs 650-crore, 547-room five-star facility has officially opened. Marketed as a multi-specialty, lifestyle hotel, it focuses on domestic clients.The hotel, which includes an inventory of 147 service apartments, hopes to recover its investment in a period of seven years.
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Eicher, Andhra Bank join hands for farm finance
Hyderabad:Eicher Tractors, a unit of Eicher Ltd, has entered into an agreement with Andhra Bank for retail financing of tractors to the farmers. According to Eicher, farmers would get several benefits through the pact. The bank would offer the lowest interest rates of 10.25 per cent per annum for loans of up to Rs 2 lakh and 10.75 per cent for above Rs 2 lakh.

For the loans of below Rs 2 lakh, the farmers would get a benefit of 225 basis points as the rate charged by the bank generally was in the range of 12.5 per cent. Apart from offering the facility of nine-years of repayment schedule, the bank would also extend the benefit of half-yearly and yearly instalments to the farmers.On its part, Eicher would offer a benefit of Rs 5,000 of discount on the invoice price of the tractor, 2,500 hours warranty on 30 HP and above tractors and 12 labour-free services.
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IDEA Cellular has 1 million subscriber base in Maharashtra
Mumbai: IDEA Cellular today announced that it has crossed the one million- subscriber mark in its Maharashtra circle.According to the company it plans to invest Rs 300 crore in the new financial year and upgrade the circle network to GPRS by May.
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Wipro to expand service portfolio to Cypress
Bangalore: Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro Ltd, will expand the service portfolio in the personal connectivity domain to Cypress Semiconductors, according to a press release.As a preferred design service partner, Wipro will provide value creation to Cypress and by working on solutions for low level software, standardisation, software hardening and logic design and verification, Wipro will further compliment Cypress's initiatives, the release stated.
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VSNL- FLAG pact on additional bandwidth
New Delhi: Following an agreement between Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) and FLAG, additional international bandwidth capacity to the IT industry and international long-distance operators (ILDOs) to the tune of 2.65 gbps is expected to be available from the middle of next week. This would ease the existing supply constraint and could lead to a decline in price for these resources, according to the Telecom regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).The agreement has been facilitated by TRAI after holding intensive meetings with FLAG and VSNL and helping the two parties to address their outstanding issues.

It has been agreed that FLAG would submit the relevant schedules to VSNL indicating the basis for the availability of the additional capacity of 17 STM-1s (1 Synchronous Transport Module-1=155 mbps). It would also charge non-discriminatory prices to VSNL, providing it the lowest prices charged in the market to either Reliance from the previously sold capacity or at a lower price if such a price had been charged by FLAG to any international telecom entity in India prior to the time of actual purchase by VSNL. FLAG also agreed to provide VSNL with clarifications on the price data on which VSNL had raised certain queries.
In addition, VSNL agreed to the allocation of 5 STM-1s that had been offered to it by FLAG out of the 17 STM-1s. FLAG has agreed to provide the remaining STM-1s in a fair manner, i.e. they should not be predominantly provided to any single party.
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LVMH launches luxury watches in India
Chennai: Swiss watchmaker LVMH Watches and Jewellery will be launching two more of its international luxury watch brands, Fendi and Zenith, in India.While Fendi would be launched in India in April, Zenith is scheduled to hit the market later during the year. The company has also launched Christian Dior's International Spring-2004 range of watches for women in Chennai.
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