Gucci to enter India with Murjani Group
Mumbai: Luxury brand Gucci plans to enter the Indian market with the Murjani Group and would open its boutiques in Mumbai and New Delhi in 2007.

According to a press release, Gucci has tied up with the Murjani Group, an international group with firm understanding of the luxury industry and Indian market to establish Gucci's presence in India, it said. Gucci associated with modern Italian style, distributes its high quality luxury goods through directly operated stores, franchises, duty free boutiques and department stores, it added.
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BCCI awards cricket rights to Nimbus Communications
Mumbai: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has awarded global media rights to Nimbus Communications for all international and domestic cricket matches owned or controlled by BCCI to be played in India over the next four years. This is as Nimbus Communications emerged as the highest bidder with a bid amount of $612 million.

The media rights will be from March 1, 2006, to March 31, 2010. The rights have been awarded for 23 test matches and 54-56 one day matches. With this, BCCI's earnings from the sale of rights and sponsorship totals to Rs 3,354 crore - team sponsor: Rs 415 crore; kit sponsor Rs 215 crore and media rights Rs 2,724 crore.
The leading arm and main sponsor is Air Sahara and sponsor for team kit and apparel is Nike.

The tender had a minimum guarantee of $425 million and is a combination of the terrestrial, global satellite, global radio and global broadband tenders. Nimbus in its bid had quoted $504.09 million for Indian matches and $108.09 million for international matches.

Zee Television was the next highest bidder at $513 million for a global package. Others included ESPN-Star Sports ($401.8 million for India television only), SET Satelite Singapore PTE ($478 million global and $397 million India), Zee Telefilms Ltd, Reliance Infocomm (global broadband), Nimbus Sports ($126.18 million international) and US media companies — Direct TV and Echo Star. Direct TV and Sony were disqualified. Prasar Bharati did not participate in the bidding process.
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RIL looks to rope in Sea King to join bidding for city sea link project
Mumbai: Reliance Industries (RIL) controlled by Mukesh Ambani, is trying to rope in Sea King Infrastructure (SKIL) to join the bidding for the Rs 4,000-crore Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) project. SKIL, one of the three shortlisted bidders for the pending MTHL project along with IL&FS and UK-based construction major Laing O'Rourke, is in final talks with RIL.

The other two shortlisted bidders are the L&T-Gammon India-Bouygues Enterprises consortium and the Italthai Engineering (Thailand)-Skanska consortium.

Earlier the Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Energy (REL) and two others were rejected by the project implementing agency Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

Sources confirmed that the SKIL-led consortium is among the three shortlisted bidders.

SKIL is the promoter of two special economic zones (SEZs) — the Maha Mumbai and the Navi Mumbai Economic zones — both of which are likely to be taken over by the Mukesh Ambani group.

The first phase of the MTHL is estimated to cost Rs 4,000 crore and will have a 22.5-km, six-lane sea link connecting Nhava in mainland Mumbai and Sewri in the island city. From Sewri, there will be two 'dispersal systems' — essentially overhead bridges across the existing roads. One will be an eight-km bridge connecting Sewri with Colaba and another a four-km bridge between Sewri and Worli. The Union government funding for the project is expected to be around Rs 1,000 crore.
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Spentex Industries to acquire Indo Rama Textiles
New Delhi: Spentex Industries is planning to acquire a majority stake in Indo Rama Textiles through acquiring 50 per cent of the company's fully paid-up equity share capital from existing promoters, in addition to the 14.99 per cent it already holds.

Spentex manufactures cotton yarn and expects to become one of India's top yarn manufacturing companies with the acquisition of Indo Rama, which has two modern plants to manufacture synthetic blended yarns.

Mukund Choudhary, managing director of Spentex said, "We have entered into an agreement to purchase 50 per cent stake from the promoters of Indo Rama Textiles at Rs 84.15 a share. He also said that the company would announce an open offer to buy 20 per cent more next week at the same price. Earlier in the day, Spentex bought 14.99 per cent of Indo Rama in a market deal valued at Rs 37.4 crore.

The Spentex scrip dropped 2.24 per cent to Rs 52.4 in a weak Mumbai market on Friday, while Indo Rama lost 6.4 per cent to close at Rs 71.1.
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Numaligarh Refinery considers Rs 800-cr IPO
Kolkata: Numbaligarh Refinery (NRL), which is 62 per cent owned by BPCL, is mulling a Rs 700-800-crore IPO. The company is already discussing the issue prospects with merchant bankers. A final decision on the offering and the issue size will be taken in the next three to four months depending on the firming up of investment proposals.

The company says it has intimated the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of the IPO.

The investment proposals include a city gas joint venture for supplying CNG in Assam by March 2007, setting up 510 retail outlets of NRL across the country by 2007-08, picking up 10 per cent stake in Assam gas cracker project and expansion of the refinery up to 4.5 million tonnes.

The Rs 600-crore city gas project is near finalisation and NRL will enter into an MoU for setting up a joint venture with Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Assam Gas Company Ltd (AGCL), a state government undertaking, by next month.

OIL will pick up a majority of 26 per cent stake in the joint venture. NRL and AGCL will jointly hold 24 per cent, the former accounting for 19 per cent. The remaining 50 per cent equity will be offered to the financial institutions.

The joint venture will lay a new 250-km pipeline from Numaligarh to Guwahati and will use the pipeline network of AGCL in upper Assam cities like like Jorhat, Sibsagar, Dibrugarh and others. NRL is already commissioning a 260-km pipeline to source natural gas to the refinery from the OIL facility at Dhuliajan.
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Ceat merges with its three subsidiaries
Kolkata: Mumbai-based RPG group company, Ceat, is merging its three wholly owned subsidiaries with itself. All these three are investment companies.

The companies are Ceat Holdings, Ceat Ventures, and Meteoric Industrial Finance Co.

Shareholders approved the merger at an EGM on February 10 this year. H.N.S. Rajput, company secretary, said that these companies had separate portfolios, which included investments both in group companies and other firms.
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Saint-Gobain to manufacture solar control products in India
Chennai: Saint -Gobain Glass India is planning to make advanced solar control products in India at its plant at Sriperumbudur, near here.

The Rs 100-crore advanced architectural processing facility will be ready by the year-end, said B. Santhanam, managing director, Saint-Gobain Glass India. He said the facility was being set up after a lot of research and would come out with products that were ideal for Indian conditions. These were products on typically green-based glass and could cut down the incidence of solar energy inside buildings by as much as 90 per cent.

Some of these products were being imported into the country and the products to be made here would have high solar efficiency and low reflective capacity, combining complex parameters in heat and light. The unit would have a capacity of 3 million sq. m of glass a year, he said.

The products would be priced in the premium end - as much as $20-25 a sq. m. He said as glass prices were likely to fall in the country because of excess capacity, companies would have to go in for more value-added products.

The company planned to earmark at least 50 per cent of the output of the second plant - whose capacity was 850 tonnes a day - for exports. Saint-Gobain hoped to export 15 per cent of the production at the automotive glass processing lines, which had a combined capacity of 2 million sets.
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M&M to expand European operations
New Delhi: Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is planning to aggressively expand its European operations to make further inroads into the European markets. Through Mahindra Europe Srl (MESRL), its European arm, it is planning to launch new vehicles in the region as well as expand its distribution network.

The company would be launching pick-up vehicles on the Scorpio platform - including a lifestyle variant - in Europe and is also ready to launch the Mahindra Classic in Europe under the name, Mahindra Thar.

M&M already sells the Mahindra Scorpio in Europe as the Mahindra Goa and expects to get sales volume of 4,000-5,000 units a year in Europe in about 2-3 years.

MESRL will also expand its distribution network to more countries in Europe over the next year and would be launching vehicles in Spain next month through 16 dealerships. M&M vehicles are already being sold in France and Italy.

MESRL is an 80:20 joint venture between M&M and its local partners based in Italy. The company imports, adapts, and distributes the M&M range of utility vehicles in Europe.
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