NTPC to have stake in Gujarat Pipavav LNG
New Delhi: The National Thermal Power Corporation will pick up a 26 per cent stake in Gujarat Pipavav LNG Company. A memorandum of understanding for the purpose has been signed and a promoters' agreement is being worked out, NTPC chairman and managing director Rajendra Singh said.

NTPC will now hold equity in both Gujarat Pipavav LNG and Petronet LNG, which is a direct competitor for Gujarat Pipavav. When queried about this situation and especially since Petronet has expressed reservations about this, Mr Singh dismissed it as a worldwide practice and said the company intends to go ahead with its plans.
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Govt may consider divestment in power sector
New Delhi: The power ministry will consider divestment of its holding in central power utilities to raise resources for the sector. It may do this through global depository receipts or by selling some of the assets of the power utilities.

"The government could consider disinvestment in the National Thermal Power Corporation and Power Grid Corporation of India in future," power secretary V.K. Pandit said at a seminar. He said this is in line with the UK model of power industry restructuring.
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Essar package offer to FRN holders
New Delhi: The Essar group is understood to have finalised a package for holders of Essar Steel floating rate notes. The package will simultaneously offer the options of a five-to-seven year rollover and redemption at a mutually agreed discounted price.

The options are part of a debt restructuring plan worked out by Banc America Securities to reduce the company's debt-equity ratio from 2.1: 1 to 1.5:1.

The proposal also includes extending the maturity period of the loans taken by Essar Steel from financial institutions from two to seven years, floating a 1:1 rights issue of Rs 330 crore and selling to Stemcor 51 per cent of the equity of Essar Minerals, a company floated by spinning off Essar Steel's pelletisation project. An agreement has already been signed by the two companies.
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Duncans ropes in Synergics for UP project
Mumbai: G.P. Goenka group company Duncans Industries has taken US-based Synergics Energy Development as a partner for its 330 MW Shrinagar Hydro Electric Power project being set up at a cost of Rs 2,200 crore in Uttar Pradesh. Synergics is a member of Germany's Voith group and a leader in hydro turbines.

There are rumours that Duncans Industries has divested as much as 95 per cent of its holding in the project to Synergics, although company officials said the equity structure will be decided after the terms of the project are finalised. Shrinagar Hydro Electric Power project has an equity component of Rs 660 crore.
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A new company for Tetley acquisition
Calcutta: Tata Tea will set up a special purpose vehicle in the UK to acquire Tetley, a top tea brand in the world. Tata Tea chairman Ratan Tata said at the annual general meeting of the company that the due diligence exercise for the acquisition will start shortly the actual bidding process will commence on the basis of the report. He said the price for the acquisition may vary between 260 million and 290 million.

Mr Tata said investment in Tetley will be in the region of Rs 2,000 crore. "The Tetley acquisition will give us a strong global presence," he added.
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Nakoda Textiles may acquire Orkay
Baroda: Orkay Synthetics may be taken over by the Surat-based Nakoda Textiles Industries. Nakoda Textiles' management has confirmed that talks are on, but refused to divulge any details, as the talks are at a "pre-preliminary stage".

Nakoda Textiles, a company promoted by Babulal Jain in August 1984, is a leading player in texturised yarn. The company is interested in only the Patalganga-based units of Orkay. There have been reports of Orkay Synthetics going into liquidation.
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Swatch will have assembly unit in India
New Delhi: The Swatch group will set up an assembly facility for watches in India in two years.

The facility will be for either an existing brand or a new brand meant for the low-end segment of the market, Ravi Thakran, the Swatch group's regional general manger for South Asia said. The group has launched the Tissot range of watches in India.

Swatch has some 42 plants spread over Switzerland, the US, Germany, China and Malaysia.
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Maersk wants to buy Thapar stake in Indian unit
New Delhi: Danish shipping company Maersk has approached the Foreign Investments Promotion Board for buying out the 20 per cent equity held by the Thapar group in its Indian joint venture Maersk Shipping Line.

The acquisition is being done through a negotiated deal. Ballarpur Industries holds the Thapar group stake in the venture
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Indian Oil hikes capacity in Gujarat refinery
New Delhi: Indian Oil Corporation has commissioned atmospheric unit No 5 at its Gujarat refinery, increasing the refinery's capacity from 9.5 million tonnes to 12.5 million tonnes per annum.

The unit comprises a crude distillation unit, revamped associated facilities and additional tanks for crude and finished products. The project has been commissioned seven months ahead of schedule at a cost of Rs 749 crore.
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Apollo hikes tyre prices
New Delhi: Apollo Tyres has increased the prices of its truck, light commercial vehicle and farm tyres by 3.5 to 5 per cent. The net dealer price of a truck tyre has been increased from Rs 8,000 to Rs 8,300 and that of an LCV tyre from Rs 3,700 to Rs 3,885.

The company said it has been forced to raise prices because of a substantial increase in the cost of raw materials.
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Sony to reach out to semi-urban markets
New Delhi: Sony India is reorienting its marketing strategy by reaching out to semi-urban markets with its high-featured and low-priced hi fi music systems. A new Sony range of four models in the price range between Rs 13,490 and Rs 27,990 has been well received, says the company.

The company also says it will now concentrate more on its audio products.
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Timex to buy back Tata shares
Bangalore: The Tata group's Titan Industries and Timex Watches have arrived at an agreement by which Timex will acquire the Tata group's shareholding in the company at a price between Rs 29 and Rs 31 per share. Timex shares are priced at around Rs 31 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The total cost of the acquisition will work out to Rs 34 crore.

Titan Industries and other Tata companies hold around 29 per cent of Timex Watches' equity. The group's Rs 11.5 crore investment in the company is expected to give a compounded yield of around 17 per cent.

Titan and Timex severed their collaborative relationship in December 1997.
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Datamatics gets certification for HR process
Mumbai: Datamatics, a leading Indian software training institution and information technology solutions provider, says it has become the first company in the world to achieve Level II of the People Capability Maturity Model, the new quality benchmark to assess companies for their human resource processes. The existing yardstick, Capability Maturity Model, assesses only software processes.

The P-CMM model was authored by Bill Curtis of Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
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Godrej launches Y2C copiers
Mumbai: The Prima division of Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co has launched the Y2C series of Rex Rotary brand copiers of NRG International, a market leader in Europe for digital copiers. The product range includes five analog and seven digital models, including a digital colour copier.

The launch marks Godrej's entry into the reprographics market.
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Parekh Platinum to set up Asia's largest gold refinery
Ahmedabad: The Rs 403-crore Parekh Platinum of Mumbai is setting up a gold refinery project near Ahmedabad at a cost of Rs 303 crore. When completed in October 2001, this will be the largest gold refinery in Asia, with a capacity to refine 150 tonnes of gold per annum. In addition to the refinery, the company is also setting up a Rs 110-crore gold jewellery plant with a capacity of 40 tonnes of jewellery per annum.

The refinery project is built in technical collaboration with Argon Heraeus of Switzerland, formerly a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Union Bank of Switzerland, which has now been taken over by Commerzbank of Germany.

Parekh Platinum is in the business of precious metals with industrial as well as consumer applications.
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CMS Generation plans O&M unit
New Delhi: CMS Generation Company is setting up a wholly-owned operations and maintenance subsidiary, CMS (India) Operations and Maintenance Company, with an investment of $5 million.

The international power major has informed the government that the investment may not be made directly by the parent company but would come through any of its 100 per cent subsidiaries around the world. The initial focus of the company will be on its lignite-based thermal power plant at Neyveli, Tamil Nadu. The Foreign Investments Promotion Board has recently approved the proposal.
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DaimlerChrysler deal with workers to affect Ford
Detroit: DaimlerChrysler has signed a labour agreement with United Auto Workers that bans the spin-off of in-house supplier units. The agreement is seen as a blow to rival Ford Motor Company.

DaimlerChrysler does not have any pans to divest in-house parts operations in the US and as such it does not lose anything by the agreement. But the provision, included in the four-year, pattern-setting agreement, matters a great deal to Ford. It affects its plans to separate its Visteon Automotive Systems, which is among Ford's top priorities.

United AutoWorkers is opposed to the Visteon spin-off. The labour union is expected to use the DaimlerChrysler pact as the basis for settlements with Ford and General Motors, the other two members of Detroit's Big 3 automakers.
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Ford plans recast
New York: Ford Motor Company will announce an organisational recast in November, says Business Week.

The magazine said Ford's new chief executive Jacques Nasser is planning to refine the 'Ford 2000' reorganisation of his predecessor. It said the company will reintroduce market focus in regions … "that will give Ford strong brands and more appealing products".
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Fraud at McGraw-Hill
London: McGraw-Hill is a victim of a multi-million pound fraud at its European head office in Maidenhead, The Financial Times said.

The newspaper said the company had uncovered the fraud, understood to have been running for several years. The potential losses could run to several million pounds, the paper said. The employee allegedly at the centre of the fraud had left the company, the paper said quoting the New York office of the publishing company.
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Kobe sells stake in plastic unit
Tokyo: Kobe Steel says it will sell its 85 per cent stake in Glastic, the US plastic company, to the Crawford group, a private American investment company.

Glastic is no longer fitting into Kobe's strategic objectives, the company said. The balance of the stake in Glastic, held by Itochu, will also be sold to Crawford. Glastic manufactures and markets thermoset plastic components.
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