Wall Street ends higher- Indian ADRs gain
Mumbai: The Wall Street ended higher yesterday as fears eased with respect to fresh rate hikes. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 68 points at 11,279. The Nasdaq moved up 12 points to 2,210.

Indian ADRs mostly finished with gains. While MTNL was up 3% at $7.79, ICICI Bank went up over 2% to $27.51. Patni Computers edged ahead 1.3% to $15.52. Infosys and Satyam, however, slipped over 1% each to $71.50 and $32.30, respectively.

Most of the other ADRs ended with marginal gains.
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VW to open production plant in Russia
Moscow: Russia signed an agreement on Monday with Volkswagen for a 115,000-vehicle production plant to be based at a city near Moscow. It was also on the verge of a deal with General Motors.

Volkswagen's plant will cost nearly 400 million euro ($510 million), and will be based in the city of Kaluga, southwest of Moscow. According to the Russian trade and economic development ministry, the German carmaker will initially spend 270 million euros ($345 million) on the plant, with a further 100 million euros ($128 million) to be invested to launch full-scale production.

The plant would be commissioned in September 2008, and would initially assemble the Skoda Octavia but would eventually roll out VW's Polo, Passat and Touareg brands, which are popular in Russia.

Volkswagen also said that it plans to roll out a special car for the Russian market.

Meanwhile, GM too, has signed a preliminary agreement with the Russian agreement towards setting up a car production facility in Russia. The company clarified however that discussions were continuing and that several more documents needed to be signed before a final deal was arrived at. GM's assembly plant would most likely be in the St. Petersburg area.

Toyota is setting up a $140 million (115 million euros) facility outside of St. Petersburg, work on which began last year, along with France's Renault SA, which has opened a $250 million (206 million euros) assembly plant for its Logan model in Moscow.

South Korea's Kia Motors Corp., launched an assembly line for its Spectra model in the central city of Izhevsk.

Volkswagen hopes to increase its annual sales in Russia from the current 30,000 to 150,000 by the end of 2010.
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Nissan, Suzuki mulling expansion of OEM deal
Tokyo: Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Suzuki Motor Corp are considering strengthening their alliance in original equipment manufacturing-based production of mini-vehicles, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported without citing sources.

Nissan may order a wider range of mini-vehicles from Suzuki and could also supply the automaker with 2-litre midsize cars, the business daily said.

Nissan has been procuring the MR Wagon from Suzuki since 2002, which it sells as the Nissan Moco. Suzuki in turn aims at bolstering its offerings of midsize vehicles and increase its customer base, the Nihon Keizai said.
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Taittingers in €600mn deal to get back family business
Paris: France's Taittinger family is poised to buy back the champagne house that it was forced to sell last year, with a bid for more than €600 million (£410 million) acting in concert with Crédit Agricole, the French bank.

Starwood Capital, the American investment firm that acquired the family's hotel and leisure empire last year, confirmed that it had selected Crédit Agricole from the eight bids that it had received "based on its highly attractive financial offer and its sensitivity to other criteria previously set".

Crédit Agricole du Nord Est, the main lender to France's champagne industry, said yesterday that its negotiations with Starwood were being undertaken with "a number of members of the Taittinger family". The talks involve three of the family's former wine businesses — Champagne Taittinger, Bouvet-Ladubay, the Loire Valley sparkling wine producer, and Domaine Carneros, a joint venture in California's Napa Valley.

Today Taittinger is the ninth-biggest champagne producer and has sales volumes of about 390,000 cases, 51,000 in the UK
Meanwhile, United Breweries, the world's third largest spirits group, said that it had pulled out of the race to acquire French champagne major Taittinger after French bank Credit Agricole, in conjunction with the Taittinger family, tabled a 10 per cent higher bid for the brewery.

A spokesperson for the UB group, which had valued Taittinger at Rs3,000 crore, said, "We have pulled out of the bid, as a French company (Agricole) increased its bid by 10 per cent than the valuation put by us."

According to market sources Credit Agricole is believed to have offered Rs310 crore more than what UB had quoted and is close to clinching the deal.
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