Rupee gains
Mumbai: The rupee gained by around three paise on Monday due to strengthening of non-dollar currencies against the dollar. The rupee opened at 40.75/77, touched an intra-day high of 40.53, a fresh nine-year high and finally closed at 40.67/68.

On Friday, the rupee ended at 40.71/72.

China's central bank has widened the daily trading band of yuan against the dollar by 0.5 per cent (against 0.3 per cent). Dealers said a strong Chinese yuan will strengthen the yen which will strengthen the rupee. According to dealers, the rupee also gained due to strong FII inflows into the domestic equities.

In forwards, the six-month premia closed at 4.08 per cent (4.51 per cent) and the 12-month ended at 3.66 per cent (3.97 per cent).

Bonds: Bond prices surged by around 40-50 paise as the RBI did not schedule a Market Stabilisation Scheme auction this week to drain out cash from the system.

Total traded volumes on the order-matching system were at Rs5,160 crore (Rs1,720 crore). Under the liquidity adjustment facility, the RBI lent around Rs12,000 crore to banks through the repo window, against Rs20,000 crore on Friday.

G-secs: The 8.07 per cent-10 year-2017 benchmark paper opened at Rs99.50 (8.14 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs99.81 (8.09 per cent YTM), against Friday's close at Rs95.72 (8.12 per cent YTM).

The 7.49 per cent-10 year-2017 paper opened at Rs95.44 (8.17 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs95.72 (8.12 per cent YTM), against the previous close at Rs95.22 (8.20 per cent YTM).

Call rates: Call rates ended at 7.9 per cent to 8.1 per cent on Monday against Friday's close of 8-8.25 per cent.

Reverse repo: In the first one-day repo auction under LAF, the RBI received and accepted eight bids for Rs2, 530 crore. There was no reverse-repo auction. In the second one-day repo auction, it received and accepted 18 bids for Rs9,480 crore.

In the second one-day reverse repo, it accepted and received two bids for Rs295 crore. CBLO: The CBLO market saw 440 trades aggregating to Rs27,069.15 crore in the 7.4-7.85 per cent range.
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Government to slow flow of external debt into real estate
New Delhi: The Government has said that it is aiming to slow down the flow of foreign debt into the real estate sector through imposing restrictions on External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs). The Finance Ministry on Friday barred those setting up integrated townships from raising ECBs and made it difficult for small players to raise borrowings by lowering the ceiling on interest rates to be paid on such debts.

"We hope that flow of external debt to real estate sector will slow down,'' Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.

At present real estate companies are already barred from mopping up ECBs, but before this integrated townships did not come under the definition of these companies for this purpose. Integrated townships are those which are built on at least 100 acres of land.

Sources said the government is apprehensive about the doubling of prices in the real estate sector in past two years. Further, excessive flow of funds also impacts inflation.

Debt raised by the Indian companies through ECB is estimated to have reached $24 billion during last fiscal, which is substantially higher than the internal cap of $22 billion put up by the government.
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Syndicate Bank to float follow-on public issue
Bangalore: Syndicate Bank proposes to float a follow-on public issue of 8 crore equity shares in the 2007-08 for meeting its capitalisation requirements. The issue would be subject to approvals from the Government and the Reserve Bank of India. Though the pricing of the issue has not been decided, it may be at a discount to the market price.

The follow-on issue is expected to dilute the government stake further. Currently, the government stake in the bank is 66.47 per cent. With the proposed issue, the government stake will come down to 57.64 per cent. The bank's paid-up equity would rise to 60.19 crore shares.

The issue is being raised to meet the bank's capital requirements for meeting its ambitious growth targets.
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BSE m-cap crosses Rs40 lakh crore
Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange's market capitalisation crossed Rs40,00,000 crore after a sharp rally across the board on the bourses on Monday. This is a significant ten-fold jump in little more than a decade. The combined market value of all the companies listed on the BSE touched Rs40,30,457 crore at the end of trading, just shy of the one trillion dollar level.

The sharp appreciation in rupee against the US currency has brought the market cap closer to the trillion-dollar mark before expectations.
The cumulative market value of all the listed entities is at $992 bn at current forex rates. However if the dollar-rupee had remained near its year-ago level of 45.50, the cumulative market value of the entities would come to around 885 billion dollars.

The m-cap stood at around Rs400,000 crore in 1995-96 and at less than 16,00,000 crore in 2004-05.
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StanChart India's net rises 51 per cent
Mumbai: Standard Chartered Bank India has registered a 51 per cent jump in its profit after tax (PAT) at Rs1,364.3 crore for FY'07, against Rs904.8 crore in the previous fiscal on the back of robust growth in net interest and fee income.

Total income for the year ended March 2007, increased 31 per cent to Rs5,390.1 crore from Rs4,114 crore last year, while total assets rose to Rs58,853 crore, up 28 per cent from the previous year.

The bank's deposits rose 20 per cent to Rs34,174 crore while advances climbed 25 per cent to Rs30,103.7 crore.

The bank's CFO-South Asia Sanjeev Agarwal said, ''Fee income as a percentage of total income improved 24 per cent reflecting our ability to provide value-added products to our customers. A sharper focus on improving efficiency has helped keep the inc rease in operating expenses moderate at 17 per cent with the cost-income ratio improving to 37.4 per cent from 41.1 per cent in the previous year.''

The Standard Chartered group has invested Rs1,360 crore in the Indian business during the fiscal in addition to the Rs1,300 crore last year.
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RBI to police credit cards
Bangalore: The Reserve Bank has taken over the administration of Ombudsman, and will appoint Ombudsman Serving Officers for a period of three years, the banking regulator's Deputy Governor V Leeladhar said. This is in order to redress complaints, especially regarding credit cards.

Leeladhar said as 80 per cent of complaints received are about credit cards, the Ombudsman scheme has now enlarged its scope, including credit cards in its ambit.
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