Rosneft: ONGC to acquire stake in Yuganskneftegaz
Moscow: India's state-owned oil company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation may acquire a stake in Yuganskneftegaz, once the main asset of the dismembered Yukos energy giant and now part of Russia's state-owned Rosneft.

According to the chairman of Rosneft, Russia has received offers from the ONGC, which has also expressed interest in participating in oil projects in Sakhalin and in the Pechora region.

Rosneft has recently secured a credit line of six billion dollars from Chinese banks in return for guaranteed oil deliveries to China's state oil firm CNPC.
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Birla Tyres targets Rs.650 crore turnover in current fiscal
Hyderabad: Birla Tyres, a flagship company of the BK Birla Group, expects its turnover to touch Rs650 crore in the current financial year.

At the launch of a new truck tyre, BT 339+, the company has said that it has garnered a market share of 11 per cent in truck tyres across the country, and that 30 per cent of its products are exported to about 30 countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Belgium.

The newly launched product is an extension the company's main brand BT 339, with higher physical dimensional features. It is specially designed for multi-axle vehicles. The company at present has 2,000 retail outlets, 52 stock points and 80 carrying-forward agents across the country.

The company's plant at Balasore in Orissa, which was installed in technical collaboration with Italy-based Pirelle Limited, at present produces 87,500 truck tryes a month. The production capacity will go up to 93,000 tryes per month by June 2005.
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United Breweries to pick up two south-based breweries
Mumbai: The Vijay Mallya-owned United Breweries (UB) is buying two south-based breweries in a bid to expand its capacity. The company is set to take over the D K Adikeshavulu-owned Karnataka Breweries & Distilleries for about Rs180 crore.

UB has a contract arrangement for manufacturing Kingfisher with Karnataka Breweries, which has a capacity of around 8 lakh hectolitre.

The acquisition would be funded from the proceeds raised through UB's Rs 940 crore deal with British brewer Scottish & NewCastle and the group's beer business. Post acquisition, UB intends to expand Karnataka Breweries capacity to 10 lakh hectolitre.

Further, the company is also in talks with Balaji Distilleries to acquire its half a million hectolitre brewery in Chennai. Meanwhile, the group is also looking at consolidating the spirits business, comprising McDowell & Company, Herbertsons and Triumph Distillers & Vintners (TDV), under United Spirits. UB is buying out TDV managing director Deepak Roy's 15 per cent in the company. TDV was floated by Roy for acquiring his former employer-United Distillers & Vintner India's Indian-made foreign liquor business in 2002. Roy later sold 85 per cent to Mallya.
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Jet Airways' Singapore flight from March end
Mumbai: Jet Airways is planning to introduce its international services to London and Singapore from March 27. The roadshows for it's IPO will be kicked off in Mumbai on February 11 to be followed later this month in Far East, Europe and the US, merchant bankers have said.

The IPO offer, through 100 per cent book building route, would be for 1.72 crore shares of Rs10 each comprising a fresh issue of 1.42 crore shares and offer for sale of 30.21 lakh shares.

Meanwhile, the airline, which has been granted seven flights to London, is close to finalising a lease agreement for three Airbus A340 aircraft to operate the daily service to London from March 27, once necessary approvals are in place, airline sources said.

In the coming months, India will have over 60 direct flights a week between India and UK with Air-India, Jet and Sahara being the latest entrants. The number of flights would be increased to 80 a week under the bilateral agreements signed between the two countries.
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ACC: Holcim not to increase open offer price
Mumbai: Swiss cement major Holcim is not considering an increase in its open offer price for Associated Cement Companies, DSP Merrill Lynch sources have indicated. DSP is the advisor to the multinational for its acquisition into Associated Cement Companies Ltd.

The end of last week saw the stock price of ACC surge beyond Holcim's open offer price of Rs370 per share to more than Rs375 per share.

There is also speculation that there might be a counter-offer round the corner waiting to be made for ACC, perhaps by another multinational-domestic cement major combine.
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BHEL plans more centres of excellence for R&D
Hyderabad: The corporate R&D arm of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) has announced that it intends to establish more centres of excellence in technological areas where it has achieved distinct core competence. In a press release, BHEL said that these centres would serve as one-stop shop for all engineering and commercial requirements in the concerned areas.

Two such centres were already in operation - the Centre of Excellence for Simulators (COE-S) and the Centre of Excellence for Computational Fluid Dynamics (COE-CFD).

The third in the series - the Centre for Excellence for Permanent Magnet Machines (COE-PMM) has taken off here on Saturday.
According to BHEL corporate R&D, the new centre would meet the infrastructural needs for the development of complete range of special permanent magnet machines (PMMs) using high-energy permanent magnets.

With these facilities, BHEL corporate R&D would now be able to take up projects to meet the needs of BHEL units, defence and space applications, Indian Railways and industrial establishments.

As the corporate R&D has developed expertise in PMMs, a number of customers have started approaching for development of these machines for strategic applications. The COE-PMM would have facilities for magnetisation of high-energy magnets prior to assembly.
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HCL Tech to expand Chennai operations
Chennai: HCL Technologies plans to increase the number of seats in Chennai for its software business by 5,000 over the next two years. Its operations in the city already account for 7,000 seats. HCL says that it is the second largest presence in the city after TCS.

Commenting on the takeover of PeopleSoft by Oracle and if it would affect HCL Tech's revenues, a spokesperson for the company said, the company catered to the requirements of both PeopleSoft and Oracle. So wit customers swinging in the direction of either company would only result in increasing business for the company.
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Qualcomm to set up lab in Pune
Pune: Qualcomm is setting up a laboratory for software development here in the iSquareIT premises in the city and will begin operations by June 2006.

Qualcomm is a US-based player in digital wireless telephony, mobile satellite communications and Internet software. Qualcomm, said the lab would showcase its technologies and also train personnel in wireless technology. The investment will be close to about $0.5 million and will mainly cater to software development.

The company recently opened centres in Hyderabad (hardware development) and Bangalore (software operations). The company's focus in India would be on furthering research and development of chips. It is also working on service offerings with operators.

According to the company the next generation technology would let mobile handsets share a common platform with of both CDMA and GSM technologies. These will be incorporated into the chips that the company is developing.
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