Govt may go for arbitration against Sterlite on Balco stake
New Delhi: The Government is unlikely to negotiate a settlement with Sterlite Industries over the sale of residual 49 per cent stake in Balco and is likely to go for arbitration. Law Minister. HR. Bhardwaj said that the Government is "doing the consultations and ultimately it will go to arbitration."

Last month Sterlite moved the courts seeking arbitration. Last Monday, the Government had obtained permission from the Delhi High Court for a negotiated settlement with Sterlite and got four weeks' time to reach a settlement.

The Delhi High Court last Monday said that if the negotiations remain deadlocked by the first week of September, arbitration proceedings would begin in court.

Bhardwaj said that the value of the share was much higher than what Sterlite was offering. Sterlite purchased 51 per cent of Balco from the Government in 2001 for Rs551.1 crore. It had the option to buy out the remaining 49 per cent after three years in 2004 March, but the process was delayed following various considerations within the Government. The Government also did not encash the cheque of Rs1,098 crore given by Sterlite for the remaining stake in the company based on valuation made by SBI Capital Markets.

The AG in April this year had held that the Government was not bound to sell the residual stake in Balco to Sterlite and instead had several options, including going public. The AG had also stated that certain provisions of the shareholders' agreement were not in line with the Companies Act.
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Govt to divest Maruti stake completely
New Delhi: The Government has decided to exit Maruti Udyog (MUL) completely but has not specified any time-frame said the Minister for Heavy Industries, Santosh Mohan Dev. Based on current market price of the company's scrip on the stock exchanges, the Government expects to mop up around Rs2,500 crore by selling its 10.24 per cent stake in MUL.

Last year, the Government had sold 8 per cent stake in Maruti to public sector banks and financial institutions for more than Rs1,567 crore following which the Government's holding in the company has come down to 10.27 per cent and it no longer has a director on the board of the company. It had then announced plans to completely exit the company by 2006.

Maruti stocks, on Monday, closed at Rs840.50 on the BSE after starting the day at Rs843.
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Pepsi ad upsets Tea Board
Coimbatore: The Tea Board is upset with PepsiCo India's advertisement on safety of Pepsi vis-à-vis tea and other food products.

Board officials said that the soft drink major has stated that the pesticides residue content in tea worked out to 14.02 ppm (parts per million) compared with 0.36 ppb in Diet Pepsi and 0.09 ppb in Pepsi.

The executive director of Tea Board, R.D. Nazeem, said the advertisement was deceptive, as PepsiCo India had added the residue levels of the six chemicals - dicofol, ethion, fenazaquin, glyphosphate, glufosinate ammonium and qunialphos. He said it was unfair to arrive at the total residual content of all the chemicals, for all of these are not used at the same time and at no point of time does tea contain this much residues.

The Board picked 133 samples in random from the teas that were showcased for the Golden Leaf India Awards - Southern Tea Competition 2005 to check if the teas conformed to the PFA (Prevention of Food Adulteration Act) norms. The TRF lab reports revealed `nil' pesticide residue for 6 chemicals but found traces of 2 pesticides, which again was far below the maximum prescribed limit he said. He added that tea was not consumed directly like soft drinks but was added to boiled water and only the infusion is consumed. The amount of residue that gets transferred to the mixture is very low compared with the residue in the black tea he added.
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Satyam plans to expand operations
Hyderabad: Satyam Computer Services will expand operations across several cities with a scaled up capex of to $100 million (Rs450 crore) from $75 million planned earlier. The company will have a headcount of 36,000-plus people by the end of the fiscal. It has acquired a 50-acre site in Chennai and about 180 acres more in four other locations including Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Nagpur.

Addressing shareholders at the company's 19th annual general meeting, the founder and chairman of Satyam, B. Ramalinga Raju, said the company planned to go, `Beyond a Billion'. He said the company had broadbased its growth across verticals and managed to combine this with geographic expansion. Continued reduction in the contribution of top 10 customers has helped in de-risking the business model. The company expects to ramp up its China operations.

The shareholders passed a resolution that enhances the capital from Rs75 crore to Rs160 crore and were rewarded with a 1:1 bonus offer.

The company is not looking at large acquisitions as mergers pose a big challenge. The focus is on smaller boutique companies with specialised skills.

Raju said the company has about 1.5 lakh individual shareholders and the returns on their investments have been phenomenal. For an investor who has invested about Rs1 lakh in 1994, the shares are worth a whopping Rs 8 crore today. It has a market capitalisation of Rs25,000 crore. The scrip ended the day at Rs800.50 on the BSE as against previous close of Rs792.85.
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Airtel in tie up with Microsoft
New Delhi: Bharti Airtel has tied up with Microsoft to enable mobile users to access a range of Microsoft Office applications and other multimedia products on mobile phones. Airtel subscribers will benefit from Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0, which will enable access to MS Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer), multi media functionalities such as camera, MP3 and video recording and a host of business applications. The service will be available to Airtel customers on the latest HP I-Paq and I-Mate handsets only. The move is aimed at enterprise and SME customers across India.

Bharti Airtel is the 115th mobile operator globally and the first in India to offer the Windows Mobile solution worldwide.
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GE Shipping subsidiary to buy two vessels
Mumbai: GE Shipping's subsidiary, Greatship (India) Ltd, has signed a contract for buying two new-building anchor handling tug-cum-supply vessels.

The company has ordered the 80-tonne vessels with Colombo Dockyard Ltd and the vessels would be delivered in the third and four quarters of 2007-08 bringing the total order book of GIL to five offshore supply vessels and one second-hand platform supply vessel, aggregating about $103 million.

Recently, GE Shipping signed a contract to buy a 1.47-lakh-dwt (dead weight tonnage) Suezmax crude carrier. The 1996-built double-hull tanker is expected to join the company's fleet in the third quarter of 2006-07.

The company's decision to induct this vessel is in tune with its objective of enhancing its double-hull tonnage, apart from building a modern Suezmax fleet.

After this delivery, the crude tonnage of the company will stand at 15 ships, aggregating 1.95 million dwt.
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Punj Lloyd gets Rs1,348-cr order
New Delhi: Punj Lloyd Ltd (PLL) the engineering and construction company, has bagged an order worth over Rs1,348 crore ($ 290 million) from Libya's Sirte Oil Company for pipeline projects. This is the single largest ever contract bid won by PLL, is to be executed on an EPC (engineering procurement and construction) basis and comprises two main contracts. The first contract, worth over Rs692 crore ($ 149 million) involves the construction of the main 98.4 km pipeline from Tripoli to Melita. It also entails the construction of a 21 km branch pipeline to the Zawia power plant, the company said. The work, slated for completion in 22 months, also involves the construction of gas pressure reducing and metering stations and a compressor station at Melita. Under the second contract, worth over Rs655 crore ($ 141 million), the company would complete a 157 km `El Khoms-Tripoli' pipeline.

Punj Lloyd would also undertake civil, mechanical, electrical and instrumentation work on the gas pressure reducing, metering and compressor stations at Sidra and Wachkah. This project is to be completed in 18 months.
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Spentex buys Uzbek company: raises Rs46.6-cr
New Delhi: Spentex Industries has completed the acquisition of Uzbek spinning firm Tashkent To'ytepa Tekstil for nearly Rs380 crore. In a notice to the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company said the buyout would catapult the company as the country's biggest yarn manufacturer with an installed capacity of over 5.7- lakh spindles.

The deal entails acquisition of two manufacturing facilities in Uzbek cities of Tashkent and To'ytepa. The purchase happened under the privatisation programme of the Government of Uzbekistan and Spentex would get a number of incentives as part of the deal, including a 15 per cent discount on raw cotton and exemption on corporate taxes, customs duty and value-added tax.

Spentex has raised Rs46.59 crore through the issue of 7.5 million shares at Rs62.13 per share to qualified institutional buyers. The money would be used for expansion and acquisitions, the textile company said in a statement. The shares were allotted to Sundaram BNP Paribas Mutual Fund, Goldman Sachs Investments (Mauritius) Ltd, Voyager Fund (Mauritius) Ltd and Nikko Asset Management (Mauritius) Ltd.
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Radico enters into 50:50 JV with Diageo
New Delhi: International food and liquor major Diageo and Indian liquor company Radico Khaitan have reached an agreement to form a 50:50 joint venture to exploit the large and developing Indian made foreign liquor segment.

The proposed venture will bring together the strengths of the two companies in brand marketing and distribution to create innovative international quality products for the modern Indian consumer a company statement said. Diageo has a strong presence in the premium Scotch segment with leading brands in India.
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Coke may meet CSE
New Delhi: Coca Cola and CSE representatives could soon meet. While Pepsi has not written to the CSE it says it is open to discussions. Till now the two cola companies were trying to hit back at the NGO, mainly by questioning the latter's findings, and waving in its face test results from foreign laboratories that went against its claims.

Coca Cola India wrote a letter to the CSE on August 16, rejecting its finding that the soft drinks contained dangerous amounts of pesticides, but seeking a meeting with the NGO to discuss the issue raised by it.

Coca Cola India's chief executive Atul Singh said: "We appreciate what the CSE is doing, though, with due respect, we reject its findings."

In response the CSE said it was willing to meet the company's representatives, but that the agenda for the meeting should be the setting of regulations for carbonated beverages, and how the company would ensure that the process moved forward.

Both Pepsi and Coca Cola said they would welcome scientifically validated tests and standards, as their product quality matched the European Union's norms for packaged water, the world's most stringent beverage standards.
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Kerala ban on Coke & Pepsi not vacated
Kochi: The Kerala High Court has refused to stay the state government-imposed ban on production and sale of Coke and Pepsi saying it had not heard the government's argument.

The Court admitted petitions filed by Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages and Pepsi India Holding, and posted the case to August 24 for hearing.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have filed separate petitions in the Kerala HC on Friday challenging the ban on production and sale of colas through the state.

In their petitions, the soft drink companies pointed out independent tests have shown that cola drinks are "absolutely safe". Despite sharing the test results with the government, the ban has still not been lifted, they said.
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Premium SMS charges to be lowered
New Delhi: Charges on premium SMSs may be lowered as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked operators to voluntarily reduce charges on such SMS.

Premium SMS are those which are sent as votes to competition programmes and others like it.

In a letter to all mobile operators, Trai say, "It is felt that the charges on premium SMS are high and bear no relationship with the cost and nature of services rendered. We hope telecom operators will voluntarily reduce the charges of these SMS and the authority henceforth would closely monitor the trends."

SMS charges for competition programmes vary from Rs3 to Rs10 and for some premium messages they are as high as Rs35. SMS revenues make up over 6 per cent of the total telecom revenues.
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