Rupee weakens marginally
Mumbai: The rupee weakened marginally by three paise against the dollar on Thursday. The rupee opened at 44.91 and touched an intra-day low of 44.95/96, to finally close at 44.89.

Forwards: The six-month premium closed at 1.88 per cent (2.07 per cent) and the one-year closed at 1.78 per cent (1.83 per cent).

Bonds: Yields dropped by around two basis points (prices were up by 9 paise) tracking US yields. Total traded volume on the order matching system increased to Rs4,810 crore (Rs3,630 crore).

G-secs: The 7.59 per cent 10-year 2016 paper opened at Rs99.90 (7.61 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs99.94 (7.60 per cent YTM) against Rs99.85 (7.61 per cent YTM), on Thursday.

The 8.07 per cent 11-year 2017 paper opened at Rs103.10 (7.62 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs103.25 (7.60 per cent YTM) against Thursday's Rs103.03 (7.63 per cent YTM).

Call rates: Call rates ruled between 6.9 per cent to 7 per cent against 6.85-6.95 per cent the day before. In the first one-day reverse-repo auction under LAF, RBI received and accepted two bids amounting to Rs260 crore.

There were no repo bids.

In the second one-day reverse-repo auction, RBI accepted and received seven bids for Rs5830 crore. CBLO: The CBLO market saw 378 trades Rs22,127.70 crore in the 6.00-6.51 per cent range.
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Credit Suisse announces enhanced India operations
Mumbai: Swiss banking major Credit Suisse plans to re-activate its brokerage in the country and build an 80-member strong team for its various business segments ranging from investment banking and asset management to wealth management and research.
Credit Suisse is awaiting regulatory approvals to enter the asset management business in India, top officials told reporters here.

The bank also announced the setting up of a business process outsourcing centre in Pune, in partnership with Wipro Technologies, to provide support functions for Credit Suisse's businesses globally.

The Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Pune will have 1,500 people providing outsourced services for a wide range of banking functions including IT, operations, finance and front-office analytics. The CoE will become operational from January 2007.
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BoI to spend Rs400 crore on contract farming
Ahmedabad: Bank of India (BoI) is in talks with four major corporates to lend Rs400 crore for their proposed contract farming activities in Gujarat. Company officials said nothing had been finalise yet.

The bank's agriculture technical team is assessing the contract farming funding proposals and the bank is targeting agricultural areas of south Gujarat and Mehsana in north Gujarat.

The companies concerned are also directly involved in the export of agricultural products.

Under the contract farming proposals, farmers would get price assurance and would no longer need to depend on money lenders for finance or middlemen for selling their products.

The bank will target commodity traders and farmers based in Unjha, a traditional hub of commodity trade in Mehsana. In Mehsana, castor and jeera would be financed for contract farming. At the same time, the bank will also finance contract farming mainly for tobacco, cotton, banana, groundnuts, mango and chiku in South Gujarat agriculture areas.

The bank said it is looking to finance Rs100 crore per corporate customer.

BoI's agricultural advances in Gujarat constitute 18 per cent of all advances in the state. Its advances portfolio in Gujarat totalled Rs720 crore. The bank's aggregate advances at the end of March 31, 2006 were Rs65,173 crore.
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JM Financial launches services sector, telecom funds
Mumbai: JM Financial Mutual Fund has launched JM Financial Services Sector Fund and JM Telecom Sector Fund which are open-ended equity sector funds, investing in equities and equity-related instruments in banking, NBFCs, housing finance companies and the telecom sector.

The new fund offer commences on November 2 and closes on November 20.

The fund aims to generate medium to long-term capital growth. The minimum application amount will be Rs5,000 per scheme.
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IndusInd to expand
Mumbai: IndusInd Bank has received approval from the RBI to open 10 more branches- mainly in semi-urban and rural areas, and start 100 new offsite ATMs.

The bank plans to open these branches by end-2007. At present, it has a network of 147 branches and 84 offsite ATMs.
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Bajaj Auto Finance to raise Rs410 crore
Mumbai: Bajaj Auto Finance said it would raise about Rs410 crore through issue of equity shares on rights basis in the ratio of 6:10.

The committee of directors approved the rights issue of 1.25 crore equity shares at a price of Rs325 per share aggregating to Rs409.37 crore to the shareholders in the ratio of six equity shares for every 10 exisiting shares held on the record date, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The company would also issue 52.48 lakh non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of the face value of Rs500 each aggregating Rs262.41 crore with detachable warrants in the ratio of one NCD with detachable warrant for every four equity shares held on the record date, it said.
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