Reliance Communication readies funds for Hutch-Essar bid
New Delhi: Reliance Communication (Rel Comm) controlled by Anil Ambani is said to have the funds ready for its bid to acquire Hutch-Essar collectively with global equity players. Rel Comm and Malaysian telecom major Maxis have indicated that they are interested in picking up a stake in Hutchison Essar.

UBS has been mandated as the advisor for raising debt and resources. Investment banking sources said If required RelComm may raise an additional $4-5 billion from the market.

Rel Comm is said to be aiming at upto 80 pc control of Hutch-Essar and not just the 67 pc stake held by Hutchison Telecom International (HTIL). Hence its bid would depend the Indian promoter Essar's consent to sell its 33 pc share.

Rel Comm had yesterday concluded borrowing of $1 billion from the international market and according to its latest financial statement, the company has cash reserves of more than $1.7 billion.

This comes even as industry sources said that Hutch was ready to give up its claim for BPL's Mumbai circle, an issue, which has lead to souring of relationship between Hutchison and Essar.

While most of the circles acquired from BPL has been merged with Hutch, only the Mumbai operations have been kept by Essar because Hutch could not get necessary clearance from the Government.

According to sources Essar is locking up funds if there is an opportunity to buy Hutchison's stake in the joint venture. Officials of both Hutch and Essar denied that there was any move to dilute equity in the joint venture company.
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ACC to invest Rs1,480-cr for increase in capacity
Mumbai: ACC plans to invest around Rs 1,480 crore for augmenting the capacity of its new Wadi plant. ACC said that its board of directors has approved capital expenditure of about Rs 1,480 crore to improve the new plant at Wadi by 3 million tonnes per annum of cement.
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Subex to raise $200mn for buy-outs
Bangalore: Subex Azure's board has approved a proposal to raise up to $200 million through a GDR/share/Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds. The Subex board also approved a proposal to increase the authorised share capital from Rs 40 crore to Rs 50 crore. Before this the company had announced plans to sponsor a Global Depository Receipts (GDR) issue.

Subex is also likely to announce acquisitions in the near future company officials said.

Subex is looking at strengthening its presence in the OSS (Operations Support Systems) space, where it already has a strong foothold in the revenue maximisation segment.

Some of the areas within the OSS space, where Subex could possibly look at expanding its presence are the service assurance, services management, services fulfilment, fault management, performance management, test and measurement among others.

The Subex board also approved a proposal to increase the cap on investment by foreign institutional investors in the company to 100 per cent of the paid-up capital of the company. At present about 33.5 per cent of Subex's shares are held by overseas investors, while promoters own about 11.6 per cent.
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Wipro gets order from ITV
Bangalore: Wipro Technologies has been engaged by ITV plc, the largest company in the UK commercial television sector and one of Europe's biggest programme producers, to develop a platform for automating the slotting of advertisements through a robust optimisation engine.

ITV owns eleven major regional licences - Granada TV, LWT, Carlton TV, Central, WestCountry, HTV, Yorkshire TV, Tyne Tees TV, Meridian Broadcasting, Anglia TV and Border Television.
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Gujarat Ambuja gets go ahead for Rs1,519-cr capex plan
Mumbai: Gujarat Ambuja Cements' board of directors has approved a capital expenditure of Rs1519 crore towards further enhancing its cement capacity by 3 million tonne per annum.
The expansion would be undertaken by setting up a new cement plant in Himachal Pradesh and two split grinding stations. The entire cement project alongwith grinding stations is likely to be commissioned by March 2009.

The company has also received all statutory approvals for its proposed merger with Ambuja Cement Eastern (ACEL). The proposed merger with be effective from January 01, 2006. The entire process of merger, including issue of equity shares of the company to the shareholders of ACEL would be completed by December 2006. Pursuant to this, the equity share capital of the company would stand increased to 151.6 crore equity shares of Rs2 each, aggregating to Rs303 crore.

With this merger, the total cement capacity of company has increased to 16 million tonne. The company is also implementing a Rs1050 crore project for setting up a 3 million tonne cement plant at Chattisgarh alongwith grinding station in West Bengal which is likely to be commissioned by March 2009. With these two new cement lines, the total cement capacity of the company will be increased to 22 million tonne by 2009.
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Unichem Lab to set up facility in Ireland
Mumbai: Unichem Lab which has raised its stake to 100 pc in its JV with UK company Niche Generics is now planning to introduce new products in Europe. The company is planning to set up an additional formulation packaging facility in Ireland.

The new UK facility will accommodate the expansion of Niche's product portfolio with new products from the Indian company.

With the new packaging facility, the company will be able to expand the product basket of Niche Generics immediately by exporting a range of new active pharma ingredients (APIs) from its facilities in India. The company declined to reveal the size of the investments in Europe including the new facility in Ireland. Niche Generics has its manufacturing facility in Ireland at present.
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Infosys plans to set up facilities in Jaipur
Jaipur: Infosys Technologies is planning to invest about Rs 400 crore in setting up two facilities, one for BPO operations and the other for IT services, at the Mahindra SEZ in Jaipur.

In addition to the existing Infosys BPO facility, the company is planning two significant investments in Jaipur over the next three-five years.

These include an investment of Rs 90-150 crore to develop a BPO facility, which will accommodate 3,000-5,000 employees and Rs 100-250 crore to develop a facility to accommodate 2,000-5,000 employees in IT services.

The unit at Sitapura has a built-up area of over 68,000 sq ft with an investment of Rs20 crore and is capable of accommodating 900 people. The facility has been in operation since August 2006.
It houses about 125 professionals. Jaipur is Infosys BPO's first significant expansion in north India.

Infosys BPO employs over 10,000 people across its various centres in Bangalore, Pune, Jaipur and Delhi and abroad.
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