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Oracle to buy 61 per cent of I-Flex for US$909mn
Redwood City, California: Oracle Corp., the world's third-largest software maker, will buy a majority stake in India's I-Flex Solutions Ltd. for as much as US$909mn in order to enrich its portfolio of programs that help banks manage loans, accounts and credit risk.

The company will pay Citigroup Inc. $593 million for its 41 percent stake and is offering public shareholders as much as $316 million for an additional 20 percent, Oracle Chief Financial Officer Greg Maffei said on a conference call.

The purchase, Oracle's fifth this year, gives Chief Executive Larry Ellison a wider product line for banks, one of the biggest markets for technology purchases. I-Flex programs dovetail with Redwood City, California-based Oracle's software that helps banks run internal operations such as planning, sales and marketing.

Ellison already this year has pushed Oracle to spend more than $11.2 billion on acquisitions of big competitors such as PeopleSoft Inc. and small companies with new technology such as TimesTen Inc.

I-Flex shares rose 68.20 rupees, or 8.2 percent, to 896.15 rupees in Mumbai. They have gained 41 percent this year. The rest of the company will still be owned by the public after the deal. Oracle offered 882.62 rupees ($20.27) for each share it will buy from the public, 6.6 percent higher than yesterday's closing price. The offer to buy the public stake is required by Indian law.

The $10.6 billion hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in January vaulted Oracle to No. 2 in the market for business-management software behind Germany's SAP AG. To keep growing, Oracle is tailoring programs to specific industries.

By total software sales, Oracle trails Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. Oracle also bought closely held Oblix Inc. and TimesTen this year to add technology to its databases, the company's biggest and most-profitable division.

The market for banking software may be a good target now. Sales at Bangalore-based I-Flex are forecast to rise 34 percent this fiscal year as customers including General Electric Capital Corp. install its software.

Oracle has 8,500 banking customers and boasts nine of the top 10 banks in the world as clients, Ellison said on the call.

I-Flex, with 575 clients including UBS AG and Deutsche Bank AG, was founded in 1992 with financing from New York-based Citigroup, the biggest U.S. financial-services company, Phillips said on the call. I-Flex has about 5,500 workers.
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Birla and Tata groups buy off Cingular Wireless stake in IDEA
Mumbai: Tata Group and the AV Birla Group have announced plans to buy out the Cingular Wireless stake in IDEA Cellular. A joint venture deal between the two companies, Idea now becomes only the second mobile provider to be fully owned by Indian companies.

Market analysts believe that the purchase of 32.91 per cent stake in Idea Cellular is likely to be divided equally between the Tata and Birla groups.
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REL promises power today if rains don't intervene
Mumbai: With the city of Mumbai slowly limping back to normalcy, Reliance Energy (REL), on Tuesday announced a Rs100-crore disaster management plan.

Senior officials said REL's back-up of 30 distribution transformers proved to be inadequate when the deluge overnight made more than 100 of them dysfunctional.

Anil Ambani, chairman and managing director, said REL has now sourced 50 transformers from Delhi's distribution companies, operated by REL, and another 50 from its vendors in Maharashtra. "These will replace the dysfunctional transformers, and we hope to restore electricity to all consumers by Wednesday," Ambani said.

As on Tuesday afternoon, Ambani said around 36,000 consumers were without electricity, most of whom were from Kurla, Bandra-East, Kalina, Saki Naka, Santa Cruz and Goregaon. He promised that power to all of them - 21,000 residential units and 15,000 industrial/commercial customers, who were in the dark since last week - would be restored within 12 hours provided there was no further downpour.

He also assured free replacement of damaged residential meters, and a payment facility with 15-days interest-free credit period for all bills raised during the July cycle.

The Rs 100-crore disaster management plan announced by REL on Tuesday aims to cope with unprecedented natural calamities in the future. Based on learnings, this disaster management plan will focus on safety, reliability and back-up capacity of the network.
He added that REL has received assistance from MSEB, Tata Power and Torrent Power, and engineers are working to restore supply.

Over 23.65 lakh of the total 24 lakh REL customers have power supply as of today, with the company having mobilised 300 engineers and equipment more from other REL locations across the country.
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Subex bags multi million dollar deal from US
Bangalore: Subex Systems Limited said on Tuesday that a North American Internet service provider (ISP) will use the Bangalore-based software firm's theft detection software, Ranger, in a "multi-million dollar" deal.

The "tier-1 ISP has a subscriber base of over five million," a Subex release said. The telecom firm's purchase of Ranger, a part of Subex's RevMax suite of telecom fraud detection and prevention software applications, was the "first pure ISP win for Subex", the release said.

Subex has some 70 telecom companies in 42 countries as its customers. The "revenue maximisation suite" offered these telcos an integrated platform to keep tabs on their customers, the retail subscribers. It helped improve revenues and bottom lines by detecting potential theft of the services the telcos offered.

The integration allowed "streamlined, standards-driven end-to-end revenue maximisation workflow."
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TCS hires a record 1,100 from campuses in a single day
Chennai: TCS is claiming a record as it made offers to about 1,100 fresh engineering graduates in a single day on the first of this month.

Earlier this year, Cognizant had boasted about making 500 offers in a single day while subsequent media reports said that Infosys had 730 candidates actually joining the organisation in a single day!

According to Tata Consultancy Services, officials the company received about 16,000 applications from 241 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. Of these, 14,000 candidates were eligible to take the test. About 3,020 were short-listed and it selected 1,112 candidates, which is a record for the company.

TCS has also signed a memoranda of understanding with three universities to help prepare students for the industry, while they are still at college. Thomas Simon, Senior General Manager, TCS, said, "We will participate in faculty initiatives and make IT training part of the curriculum."

This, he said, would help reduce the 72 days that a fresh engineering graduate spends in training when he joins the rolls. "With our involvement in the campus, the number of days taken to train a fresh candidate to our satisfaction would come down by 60 per cent (or about 43 days)."

TCS, he said, also made grants to universities to train faculty or to update libraries.
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Sun Microsystems slots India for major investments
Bangalore: US-based Sun Microsystems Inc. has identified India amongst the four countries for "major investments" in its global Mission Charter for Financial Year 2006, a top company executive in India has said.

Bangalore, where Sun has its engineering centre, Beijing in China, St. Petersburg in Russia and Prague in Czech Republic would see "major investments" in terms of facility and the number of people, Sun Microsystems India Managing Director Bhaskar Pramanik told reporters here.

Sun has invested $ 150 million in India since 1998 and expansion would "only accelerate", he said. India contributed "significantly" to Suns global revenues, Pramanik said but declined to mention the numbers.

The company grew faster in India than in China, he said.
Sun Microsystems India, he said, continued to outperform against industry and competition. It recorded a 28 per cent growth in revenues for FY05. Sun Microsystems India also added 164 new customers and saw "tremendous growth" in some of its businesses like X64, Storage and Services, Pramanik said.

Sun has demonstrated growth across all key segments of the market including servers, storage, software, solutions and services, he said.

According to IDCs Asia-Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Server Tracker Q4 2004, Sun has maintained its leadership position in the non-x86/Unix server market segment in India by being the fastest growing non-x86 Unix server vendor, he said. Sun maintained second position in Linux servers and first in External Unix Storage, Pramanik said.

Sun Microsystems presently employs 1,200 people, including 1,000 in the Bangalore engineering centre. On plans to increase the headcount, he said the company added 400 more last year and "that is the pace at which we will continue to grow."
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Jubilant Organosys to issue shares to FIIs
New Delhi: Jubilant Organosys Ltd has said that it would issue 9.9 lakh shares on preferential basis to foreign institutional investors.

The board of directors will issue 9.9 lakh shares (of face value Rs5 each) for cash, at a price of Rs1,100 per equity share on a preferential basis to one or more investment entities affiliated with General Atlantic LLC, subject to shareholders approva l, it informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.

It has approved the increase in the FII investment limit in the company's equity share capital to 45 per cent, it said.

The board has also approved the allotment of 7,17,500 equity shares under the Jubilant employees stock option plan under which share options will be given to selected employees and directors, each option giving right to subscribe to one equity share of R s 5 of the company, it said.
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