ICI Paints lines up Rs1,500-cr war chest for acquisitions
Bangalore: ICI Paints has lined up a Rs1,500 crore war chest for acquisitions in order to grow its business in India. The company will be looking at both organic and inorganic growth in order to increase its market share, which is currently at 15 per cent.

Rajiv Jain, managing director, told newspersons that ICI has around Rs500 crore in cash and could raise another Rs1,000 crore for acquisitions. According to Jain, ICI's revenues touched Rs1,000 crore last year and the company expects revenues to grow 20 per cent this year.

The decorative paints business is currently growing 13-14 per cent, mainly fuelled by the real estate boom in the country. It has identified paints, starch and adhesives and fragrance as its core businesses.

ICI produces 60 million litres of paints every year and has doubled the capacity at its three plants in three years.
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Suzuki-Nissan in major expansion plans
New Delhi: The Suzuki-Nissan Alliance would like to pump in $1.5 billion in order to make India an export and manufacturing hub. The alliance plans to export 3.5 lakh cars annually.

Top officials from Suzuki and Nissan conducted a meeting with prime minister Manmohan Singh, finance minister P Chidambaram, commerce minister Kamal Nath, and the heavy industries and railway minister in order to discuss the requirement for infrastructure and resources which would allow them to execute their plans.

Company officials said that since a big portion of whatever they produced would go outside the country they would like to have better transportation facilities, good ports, roads and railways to transport the car units.

According to sources, Suzuki and Nissan have identified a site at Manesar, Haryana to setup its manufacturing facility.

Tokyo-based motor company Nissan currently has three variants of its sport utility vehicle called 'the X-trail' in the Indian market, while Maruti has aggressive plans of launching five new cars over the next five-years in India.
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Contractual and infrastructure snags may delay Orissa projects: Tata
Bhubaneswar: The National Investment Commission, headed by Ratan Tata, said on Wednesday the investors lining up projects in Orissa are quite serious. The commission, however, cautioned that lack of infrastructure and some points of negotiation in contracts may slow down the investment process.

"Our assessment is that investors are looking seriously at Orissa," said Tata. He added, "Among things that may have led to slowing down of projects are infrastructure and some points of negotiation in contracts. The issues are well under control and can be resolved through clarifications."

Tata and fellow member Deepak Parekh attended a high-level meeting chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik at the state secretariat on Wednesday. The state government, which has lined up investments to the tune of Rs4 lakh crore in sectors like steel, aluminium, power, port, IT, and tourism, gave a presentation on projects being implemented in Orissa.
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Cognizant eyeing acquisitions in Europe, U.S., India: CEO
Mumbai: U.S. software outsourcing company Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (CTSH) has said that it plans to buy companies in the U.S., Europe and India in order to boost its service offerings and add new clients.

Lakshmi Narayanan, its chief executive, said Wednesday, "The Europe buys would be primarily to add clients, while in U.S. and India, we will seek to acquire companies with specific domain knowledge." Cognizant will look at other software companies specializing in financial services, healthcare and manufacturing segments, Narayanan said.

Cognizant, which currently employs 31,000 people globally, has 23,000 of them working out of India.
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Sundaram Business Services in JV with Dubai's ETA Group
Chennai: Sundaram Business Services (SBS), the BPO arm of Sundaram Finance, has formed a joint venture with ETA Group, the Dubai-based business conglomerate. The joint venture company has plans to hire accounting professionals and people with skills in Arabic language.

The new company, christened Gulf Outsourcing Services Pvt. Ltd., will be headquartered in Chennai, and will start operations with an initial investment of Rs2 crore. While SBS will have 40 per cent stake, ETA will put in 60 per cent capital in the new venture. ETA funds will be routed through ETA Starholding Ltd located in India.

According to company officials, the joint venture would target BPO markets in the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with focus on the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) verticals. The joint venture would open a full-fledged office in Dubai shortly.

Sundaram BPO was also seeing a lot of traction in the domestic market, especially in the insurance verticals.
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Infy has aggressive growth plans for EMEA region
New Delhi: Infosys Technologies has charted out an aggressive growth plan for the Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) region.

The company's expansion plan envisages an expansion of its nearshore capability at Brno in the Czech Republic, where a new 350-seat facility is under development. The new center, which will open in January 2007, will offer IT services, such as infrastructure management and package implementations, such as ERP and CRM over and above its existing sales order management, finance and accounts, market research and underwriting services. The centre currently provides services for clients across 16 European countries.

Besides, Infosys has opened its second onshore development centre in Swindon, UK, and has expanded the existing one in Germany. The company's nearshore operations in Mauritius have also been expanded.
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CAS pricing issue: Zee ready to move TDSAT
New Delhi: Zee Turner Ltd, ESPN Star Sports and Star Group are expected to move the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal against the capping of pay channel prices at Rs5 per month by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

While Zee executives have confirmed the move, ESPN Star and Star Group executives have said that they were still evaluating the option.

The cap on prices will apply to the notified metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata where the conditional access system (CAS) is to be rolled out from January 1, 2007.
Meanwhile, a section of the cable operator community has approached the information and broadcasting ministry to reduce the ceiling price from Rs5 to Rs3 per channel.

"We are making a representation to the government to reduce it to Rs3 as the broadcasters would be reaching out to millions more due to the complete addressability in CAS," said Roop Sharma, president, Cable Operators Federation of India.
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Essar shortlisted for picking up stake in Suez Steel
Mumbai: The Essar group has been shortlisted for acquiring the Egyptian government's 83 pct stake in Suez Steel, according to media reports, which are citing investment banking sources.

Suez Steel operates a steel mill near the Red Sea coast, with a capacity to produce 600,000 tonnes of billets per year. Essar executive had earlier mentioned that the group had submitted an expression of interest (EoI) for the steel company, but were yet to hear from it.
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