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Kanishk Steel to relocate acquired Italian plant in TN
Chennai: Kanishk Steel Industries has acquired a 1.5-lakh tonnes steel re-rolling plant from Lamifer of Italy. The plant was set up 8-years ago.

The company plans to relocate the plant to India and set it up at Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, where it already has a billet plant, which can go into steel making.

Kanishk paid the Italian company Rs16 crore for the plant, but the total cost of the project works out to Rs52 crore.

The project would be completed by October 2006.
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Tata Steel-BlueScope JV looks at Rs.1,000 crore turnover
Mumbai: The Tata Steel-BlueScope Steel 50:50 joint venture is looking at a turnover of Rs1,000 crore by 2010 and expects to stabilize a revenue stream of around Rs2,000 crore once the venture achieves full capacity, company officials said.

The joint venture, which would offer steel-based solutions for the construction industry, is looking at a total investment of Rs1,200 crore, with half of that being the equity component. It would have four manufacturing locations, at Pune, Bhiwadi, Sriperumbudur and Jamshedpur, and also a network of sales offices across the SAARC region.

Of these locations, the first three sites would host facilities specialised in building solutions and would be operational by 2006. The facility for making metal-coated sheet, essentially processing cold rolled steel from Tata Steel into `Zincalume,' one of BlueScope's branded metal-coated products, would be commissioned in Jamshedpur by 2008.

The same factory would also value-add the metal-coated sheet into colour-coated sheet.

From the 250,000 tonnes metal-coated sheet capacity proposed at Jamshedpur, 150,000 tonnes would be processed into colour-coated sheet (BlueScope's brand in the segment is `Colorbond'), the balance 100,000 tonnes would be sold in the market as Zincalume.
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Publicis acquires majority stake in marketing services agency Solutions
Paris: The fourth largest advertising group in the world, the Publicis Groupe based in France has picked up a 60 per cent stake in marketing services agency, Solutions for an undisclosed sum. This acquisition is expected to widen Publicis' presence in India and Asia.

The deal, which requires regulatory approval, gives Publicis a presence in India's marketing services industry, which it said is valued at about US$1bn a year. Publicis said India's "point of purchase" advertising spend was growing at 30-40 per cent per year.

Founded in 1995, Solutions employs 200 staff and 650 contract and temporary employees. It has six offices in India, a subsidiary in Singapore, and a client list that spans Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung and Gillette.
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Tata Steel eyes South Africa's Highveld Steel
Mumbai: Tata Steel is now eyeing South Africa based Highveld Steel for acquisition and has begun talks with Anglo-American, which owns 79 per cent stake in Highveld.

Tata officials declined to attach any special significance to the talks, and said they were also evaluating a number of other steel companies for the same purpose.

Tata Steel has manufacturing facilities in six countries in the Asia Pacific region and China. The company plans to set up a six million tonne steel plant in Iran and a two million tonne plant in Bangladesh.
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Carborundum ties up with SA firm
Chennai: Carborundum Universal, a Murugappa group company, has entered into a partnership with South African firm Cerdak, a pioneer in wound treatment devices, to market its products in India.

This would enable the company to enter into the bio-ceramics verticals, its chairman, M M Murugappan said.

Carborundum Universal deals with abrasive, refractory products and electoral minerals.
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Bennett Coleman acquires 8.59 per cent stake in Kinetic Motor
Mumbai: Bennett Coleman said Wednesday that it has picked up 14.18 lakh shares in Kinetic Motors, which translates into an 8.59 per cent stake through preferential allotment, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.
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Board of Reconstruction makes recommendations to turn around 30 PSUs
New Delhi: The Board of Reconstruction of Public Enterprises (BRPSE) has come out with recommendations to turn around public sector enterprises. According to the organization, if its recommendations are implemented the turnaround package for over 30 PSUs would come to Rs418 crore of which Rs94 crore will go towards funding voluntary retirement scheme for the workers of these companies.

BRPSE said despite working overtime to formulate the revival schemes, there has been considerable delay in their approval, which the administrative ministries are seeking from the CCEA.

The Board has asked for "fast track approval system" permitted in the past for the ministry of disinvestment.

The Board is also of the view that productive employment should be increased after revival, which would eliminate the need for VRS.
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Juniper opens new technical centre
Bangalore: Data networking company Juniper Networks, on Tuesday announced the opening of a new technical centre here, set up at a cost of US$8.5mn. The new facility integrates employees located at two dispersed facilities here and would focus on the full spectrum of engineering work currently done in the US.

The centre's laboratory would support Juniper Networks product development by testing systems for the company's solutions, said managing director, India operations, Sridhar Sarathy.
He also said that the Bangalore centre's employee strength, at present about 325, or 10 per cent of the global workforce, would be increased to 650 by the end of next year.

Juniper's other centres are located in the US, Canada, China and Israel. The Indian centre does software and hardware development, system testing, technology documentation and technical assistance.

Juniper Networks serves the world's top 25 telecom carriers and 77 per cent of the 'Fortune 100' firms. The company reported revenues of US$1.3bn in 2004, up by 91 per cent from 2003, and US$546mn in the 3rd quarter 2005, Sarathy said.
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Trai directs Bharti to refund Rs.32.73 crore to subscribers
New Delhi: Telecom regulator TRAI has directed Bharti Televentures, operating AirTel mobile services, to refund Rs32.73 crore it took from subscribers for migrating to revised tariff plans.

The operator collected a one-time fee ranging from Rs50-Rs200 aggregating Rs35.49 crore from existing subscribers for switching to revised plans with lower charges.

Trai said charging a fee like this violates the provisions of Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 and accordingly issued a direction, asking Airtel to refund the migration fee charged from the subscribers.

The statement said that the difference between total refund due and total refund made was Rs2.76 crore, which would be put in separate dedicated accounts.

The authority also directed Airtel to publicise the refund in the media/newspapers so as to enable the customers to avail the benefit of the refund.
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L&T postpones IT venture launch in China
Beijing: Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has postponed plans to launch its information technology operations in China for now. It is instead focusing on setting up its first overseas manufacturing plant and export of heavy engineering and industrial valves to the booming market.
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Swift, City, Innova top TNS customer satisfaction study
New Delhi: As per the 2005 four-wheeler total customer satisfaction study released on Wednesday by TNS, a leading market information provider, Maruti Suzuki Swift, Toyota Innova and Honda City have been placed at the top in the premium compact cars, mid size cars and SUV/MPV segments, respectively.

The four-wheeler Total Customer Satisfaction study by TNS Automotive represents responses from more than 7,000 new car buyers and covers over 50 models with customer evaluations taken in key areas of sales satisfaction, product quality, vehicle performance design, after sales service, brand image and cost-of-ownership.

The models ranked at the top in their respective segments for total customer satisfaction in the small and compact car segment are: Maruti 800 for entry compact, Maruti Wagon-R for premium compact, Maruti Suzuki Swift for upper premium compact, Tata Indica Diesel for small car- diesel. For mid size segments the models are: Hyundai Accent Petrol for entry midsize, Honda City for midsize, Toyota Corolla for premium midsize, Hyundai Accent Diesel and Mitsubishi Lancer Diesel for midsize car, diesel.

The luxury cars getting the honours are: Honda Accord for entry luxury, Toyota Innova for SUV/MPV and Honda CRV for premium SUV.
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XLRI-Accenture academy for HR education
Bangalore: XLRI, one of the oldest labour management institutes in India and consultancy organization, Accenture have together started an HR training academy dedicated to the human capital management needs of the growing information technology and business process outsourcing industries in India.

The Accenture and XLRI HR academy is dedicated to providing recent graduates seeking careers in HR with specialised skills geared to these industries, an Accenture statement said.

The academy offers a 24-month programme for recent university graduates who have joined Accenture as trainees in the HR department, the statement said.

The first batch has 34 trainees, who form part of a work-study opportunity, and will be employed with Accenture as they undergo the programme conducted jointly by XLRI and Accenture, with courses developed jointly by the two organisations, the statement added.
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ONGC to import Sakhalin crude in second quarter of 2006
New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas Corp. said on Wednesday that it plans to import 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) from its share of output in Russia's Sakhalin-I project by the second quarter of 2006.

ONGC has a 20-per cent share in the Sakhalin-I project, according to which it is entitled to 10,000 bpd out of the expected output of 50,000 bpd in the second quarter of the fiscal.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has a 30 per cent stake in the project, while Japanese consortium Sodeco holds another 30 per cent. The rest is held by state-run Russian oil company Rosneft.

ONGC will also get Rosneft's 20 per cent share of the output in return of a loan given to the Russian company, but so far ONGC had decided to import only its share of the oil to India.

India imports 70 per cent of its oil, most of which is sour crude from the Middle East, and is trying to diversify its sources.
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