Tata Steel loses Highveld race to Russian company
Kolkata: Tata Steel is out of the race for acquiring South African steel company Highveld & Vanadium. Russian company Evraz has acquired the latter for $687 million. Mittal Steel had pulled out of the race earlier.

Anglo American that owns Highveld, has sold 79 per cent stake in the company. Evraz and investment bank Credit Suisse have purchased 24.9 per cent stake each.

Merchant banking sources said Tata Steel had put in a conditional bid for acquiring only its steel business. Industry sources said the Tata group, was not in favour of bidding aggressively for a company which had a low steel production capacity.

Sources said forty per cent of Highveld's revenue came from the steel business, while the balance comes from vanadium and ferro-alloys. Highveld produced 684,000 tonnes of rolled steel last year.
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McDowell net jumps 234 per cent
Mumbai: McDowell & Co has reported a jump in net profit of 234 per cent at Rs34.68 for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 against Rs 10.38 crore for the corresponding period last year.

Income from the operations surged 63.48 per cent to Rs533.54 crore during Q1 2006-07 from Rs326.36 crore during Q1 of FY06.

United Breweries chairman and managing director Dr Vijay Mallya said McDowell had initiated a drive to de-emphasise the less profitable second line brand with the intent of driving value rather than volume. This re-focusing has helped the company to report 7 per cent increase in the volume of its profitable first line brands.
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UB Group raises a toast to wine
Mumbai: the United Breweries Group is planning to set up a wine-bottling unit at Baramati in Maharashtra. Recently the company entered the wine business through the acquisition of French wine-maker Bouvet Ladubay for 15 million. Initially, UB will import wine in bulk, said UB Group chairman Dr Vijay Mallya. The plant will be set up in six months, as part of the second phase and it will require an investment of 5 million he said.

He said that UB would look at indulging in viticulture and would rather enter into buy-back arrangements with contract farms to source grapes. Bouvet has a portfolio of sparkling and still wines and products from this stable will be introduced into India as bottled-in-origin packs as well as bulk wines for domestic bottling.
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Star directed to share channels with Dish TV
New Delhi: Providing relief to Dish TV, the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) has directed Star India to provide its channels to ASC Enterprises' Direct-to-Home platform Dish TV within the next 15 days. TDSAT has also asked Star TV to make available all its channels for not more than Rs27 per subscriber. Star had earlier demanded Rs 67 per subscriber for some of its channels. It had also demanded that Dish TV should give a commitment of minimum of 50,000 subscribers if it wanted to share the channels.

Rejecting this, TDSAT said, "The quantum of minimum guarantee sought from the petitioner (ASC Enterprises) by the respondent (Star India) is much higher than the minimum guarantee sought from Tata Sky (DTH joint venture between Star and Tata). We feel that this term being imposed by the respondent is not justified and neither in accordance with regulation and amounts to denial of request of the petitioner for supply of signals. We, therefore, direct that signals be given to petitioner who will pay on the exact number of consumers, list of which will be submitted from the subscriber management system to the respondent every month."

The telecom tribunal did not however specify the rate per channel, saying it was the prerogative of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

ASC Enterprises had filed an appeal with TDSAT after Star TV refused access to its bouquet of channels. In its appeal, ASC had said that Star TV was offering better rates to its own DTH company TataSky.
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Apollo to provide healthcare services in Ethiopia
Chennai: Apollo Hospitals will provide advance healthcare services to Ethiopian patients through periodic outpatient consultations in Addis Ababa, according to a press release from Apollo. The arrangement follows a healthcare facilitator agreement with an Ethiopian healthcare group, Saint Yared Hospital Holdings Plc.

The agreement provides for Apollo Hospitals' consultants in cardiology, orthopaedics, neurology, nephrology, oncology and pediatrics to hold consultations.
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Fujitsu plans development centres at multiple locations in India
Bangalore: IT major Fujitsu, which began its Indian operations at the beginning of this year, has decided to set up development centres at multiple locations in the country.

These offshore development centres will cater exclusively to Fujitsu's North American clients and will be engaged in design work for niche products in the automotive sector. The company is looking at projects involving CAD/CAM work which are in the final stages. Once the deals are through, the company would go ahead with the plans to open development centres in India.

The firm's focus is on Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.
The requirement ranges from 300 seats or more at each location.
Fujitsu also offers a whole range of products like computing products and services in India.
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HCL BPO to employ 5000 more people
Kolkata: HCL Technologies will add 5,000 more people to its business process outsourcing (BPO) division which now has 10,000 members. The extra numbers would be added during July 1, 2006 and June 2007, which is the company's accounting year. The investment in employee additions by way of creating seats and building technology would be $25 mn.

The majority of the additions would be in India while 150-200 could be recruited for the operations in Northern Ireland. The recruitments would be both for the voice and non-voice segments. HCL is endeavouring to balance its voice and non-voice businesses.

Non-voice, currently at 30 per cent would increase to 50 per cent over the next 2 years. HCL's BPO operations grew at 50 per cent last year and the division is eyeing similar growth rates in the coming year.

The revenues of HCL's BPO division which was merged with HCL Technologies from April 1, 2006, stood at $160 million.

The division is looking at acquisitions in the US and UK and the size of the target acquisition is in the $50-$100 million range. HCL Technologies is sitting on cash of $500 million.
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Regional telecom operators plan to switch to GSM spectrum
New Delhi: After Reliance Communications made efforts to switch over to GSM spectrum, smaller regional CDMA-based telecom operators have also started applying for GSM spectrum.

These include Punjab-based HFCL Infotel and Rajasthan-based Shyam Telelink.

Both the companies have a unified access service licence (UASL) and are eligible for providing services of technology of their choice.

An HFCL official said that in mobile the infrastructure cost in GSM-based technology was lower than CDMA.

Also, since there is no national roaming pact among CDMA mobile operators, single circle operators, like HFCL, are not able to provide roaming to their subscribers, which is a big handicap. Shifting to GSM would solve the problem, he said.

HFCL and Shyam provide CDMA-based wireline, fixed wireless and mobile services in Punjab and Rajasthan, respectively.

HFCL's total subscriber base at the end of May stood at 327,371, with mobile contributing 62,361. Similarly, Shyam's total base is at 204,699, with mobile contributing 27,627.

Industry observers see the move as a symbolic setback for the CDMA technology as well as for its global patent holder Qualcomm Inc.
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68 pc FDI cleared in Hutchison Essar
New Delhi: The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has cleared the way for Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications to increase its stake in the Indian cellular company Hutchison Essar to 68 per cent though it is not yet clear whether the approval includes Egyptian telecom operator Orascom's stake.

Orascom had earlier picked up a 19.3 per cent stake in Hutchison Telecom, which gave it a 10 per cent indirect stake in Hutchison Essar. The Orascom deal came under Government scrutiny, with the National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, writing a letter to the Department of Telecommunication saying that Orascom's acquisition of equity in Hutch International was a threat to national security as the Egyptian operator was a dominant mobile operator in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
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Intel to slash 1,000 managerial jobs
Bangalore: The world's largest Chipmaker Intel has announced that 1,000 managerial posts worldwide would be axed as part of the company's cost-cutting initiative. In its first decision post the downsizing announcement, Intel announced that 1,000 managers would be laid off worldwide.

The company spokesperson based in Hong Kong refused to divulge details of the sacking on a country-to-country basis. The IT behemoth had recently announced it would be conducting an `efficiency programme' to determine expendable positions across its centres. Industry analysts expect further job cuts. The firm employs around 3000 employees across 10 locations in India.
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Liberty Shoes signs joint venture with Pantaloon Retail
Bangalore: Liberty Shoes and Pantaloon Retail have entered into a joint venture called `FootMart' to launch a branded footwear retail chain. FootMart has opened its `Shoe Factory' outlets in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and would set up more outlets before the year-end in Mumbai and Hyderabad, which would have two stores each.

It would open one store each in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Agra, Lucknow and Chandigarh. Liberty Shoes has a 49 per cent stake in the joint venture. Rs30 crore would be invested in setting up Shoe Factory units. The company plans to rollout 100 stores in five years.
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Hyundai to launch corporate campaign
Mumbai: Hyundai Motor India is launching a corporate campaign to leverage its brand across all segments and enhance its image, especially in the entry-level luxury segment.

The campaign is most likely to be launched in mid-October just before major festivals such as Diwali commence.

A strategic research analysis conducted by the company had revealed that in the entry-level segments such as the D (Elantra) and D plus (Sonata) segments, the brand has a low recall. Hence, it took the decision to launch a corporate campaign.
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Lamborghini comes to India
New Delhi: Lamborghini has made its debut in India with the rollout of two of its models — Gallardo and Murcielago. While the compact, two-seater Gallardo will sport a price tag of Rs1.65 crore, its convertible variant Gallardo Spyder will cost Rs1.85 crore. The two-seater, two-door coupe Murcielago has a Rs 3-crore price-tag.

Officials at Lambhorgini said the 43 year-old company does not believe in big volumes but prefers exclusivity. It has been selling just 250 cars per year annually for about 40 years.

Instead of setting up a direct representative office in a country (except in case of Japan), the company prefers to enter markets through the dealership route. In India, it has a tie-up with Mr Satya Bagla's Exclusive Motors, which besides Delhi, is likely to start a new dealership in Mumbai by this year-end.

It has three dealerships in China and sold 20 cars in the country, while for Russia where it began operations this year, it has set an annual target of 25 cars.
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IndiGo launches new services
Hyderabad: IndiGo, a low-cost airline, has announced new services, connecting Delhi and Chennai with Hyderabad. Bruce Ashby, president and chief executive officer, said tickets were on sale for the services that would commence on September 20. The airline had announced introductory fares on these sectors. Fares would start at Rs1,699 for Hyderabad-Delhi route and Rs999 for Hyderabad-Chennai, a press release said here.
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