Asian Paints promoters strengthen hold
Mumbai: Ashwin Choksi, Ashwin Dani and Abhay Vakil, promoters of Asian Paints, have bought 4.5 per cent of the company's paid-up equity from Kotak Mahindra Capital Company at Rs 74.4 crore. With this, the three promoters together hold 45 per cent stake in Asian Paints.

In 1997, Kotak Mahindra had bought a 9.1 per cent stake in the company from then managing director and promoter Atul Choksey on behalf of ICI. Last year, it had sold around 4.6 per cent of this stake to Unit Trust of India.

With the existing Asian Paints promoters now buying additional shares in the company, the controversy over a likely takeover by ICI has finally been buried.
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Bharti to buy into JT Mobile
New Delhi : Bharti Enterprises, the joint venture company of the Bharti group and British Telecom, is in advanced talks with the Thailand-based Jasmine International and Telephone Organisation to buy 23 per cent of JT Mobile's equity. Reportedly Bharti is also in talks with other shareholders to buy out their holdings, since it is interested in majority shareholding in JT Mobile.
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A data network for universities
Mumbai : The government's department of telecom, Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh, USA, and Indian educational institutions such as the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Science, are getting together to set up Sankhya Vahini India, a national high speed inter-university data network project. SVI, which will have a project cost of around Rs 1,000 crore, will be headquartered in Mumbai.

The telecom department will own 45 per cent of the equity of the project, and Carnegie Mellon 49 per cent. Indian educational institutions will hold the rest.

The project, work on which will begin next month, is expected to take three years for completion. SVI will set up the data network with a bandwidth above 2.5 GBPS, will initially connect 10 metros and more than 100 universities. It will also meet the data communication needs of commercial organisations. And, since the bandwidth is high, SVI service users could well include Internet service providers in the future.
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Castrol India to realign operations
Mumbai : Lubricants major Castrol India is planning to remerge its consumer and commercial businesses from January 2000. The realignment is planned to suit Indian conditions, less than a year after the second largest subsidiary of the $5-billion Burmah Castrol plc realigned operations in line with global business.

The merged consumer and commercial division is to be headed by R.A. Savoor, CEO and managing director. To Castrol India's total turnover of Rs 1,079 crore in 1998, the consumer division contributed 75 per cent and the commercial division eight per cent. The industrial and marine divisions made up the balance, with the latter accounting for only one per cent.
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Pfizer Inc. bids for Warner Lambert
New York : Close on the heels of the announcement of Warner Lambert's merger with American Home Products two days ago comes Pfizer Inc.'s surprise takeover bid for Warner Lambert for $79.7 billion. Stopping short of explicitly rejecting Pfizer's offer, Warner Lambert has said in a statement that the AHP deal remains in the best interests of its shareholders.

Warner Lambert is the ninth-ranked ninth US drug companies, AHP is number five and Pfizer number two. Warner Lambert's merger with either of the other two companies would create the largest drug and home healthcare products organisation in the world.
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Essar Commvision may offer stake to HFCL
New Delhi : Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd is considering picking up a stake in the basic telephone services licensee in Punjab, Essar Commvision Ltd. The exact equity stake to be taken has still to be arrived at, though it is clear that there will no sale of equity by Essar. This is because the licence agreement stipulates that the promoter's stake will be locked in till September 2002.

Under the telecom migration package accepted by Essar Commvision, it can bring in fresh investments. For HFCL, the deal means possible equipment contracts worth Rs 750 crore, though this will not be in lieu of equity. This deal would mark HFCL's re-entry into the fixed line business from which it had virtually disappeared after failing to convert bids for eight basic circles into licences four years ago.
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LG to invest $20 million on refrigerator unit
New Delhi : LG Electronics India Ltd has decided to put in an initial investment of $20 million to set up a refrigerator manufacturing plant at its existing premises in Noida. The plant with an installed capacity of 2 lakh refrigerators is expected to become operational in early 2001. A range of frost-free refrigerators of under-300 litre capacity will be made at this plant. The project is part of LG's plans to strengthen its home appliances business in India.

LG currently imports over-300-litre refrigerators, and sources direct-cool refrigerators from Voltas' Allwyn plant in Hyderabad. The tie-up with Voltas stipulates that LG will source 6 lakh refrigerators from that Tata company between January 2000 and December 2002.
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Telstra more interested in Internet business
New Delhi : Australian telecom giant Telstra has decided not to bring in fresh investment into circle-level telecom operations in India. New investments will be concentrated on Internet and other businesses where the company can have a national level presence. This is in keeping with the company's decision to direct all international investments to Internet protocol businesses.

This means that the company may eventually divest its holding in Modi Telstra in India, in which it has a 49 per cent stake. It's in no hurry to do that, since it first wants to identify businesses that fit in with its new strategy. The B.K. Modi group, partner in Modi Telstra, may be willing to step in. It has the first right of refusal, according to the shareholders' agreement.

Telstra is doing a market study to help it draw up a business plan. Investment is likely in the Internet service provider business, or in supply of Internet access services to corporate clients. Telstra is even open to investing in the domestic long distance business, if national licences are offered. Besides, Telstra V-Comm, the Australian company's V-SAT manufacturing business here, may well get paid more attention since it fits in with Telstra's new strategic focus.
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L&T picks up stake in DLF Cements
Mumbai : Larsen & Toubro has picked up a 2 per cent stake in DLF Cements by converting that company's debentures that it owned into equity. It exercised its option on 3.92 lakh fully convertible debentures at Rs 35 each, issued by the Jaipur-based DLF Cements. After the conversion, L&T holds 33.35 lakh shares of Rs 10 each in DLF Cements.

L&T does not intend to increase its stake in the future, however, even though it has announced its decision to expand its strength in cement through acquisitions as well as organic growth. L&T maintains that DLF Cements was only an investment decision.
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Wipro Technologies to look for more offshore business
Bangalore : In order to step up growth in operating profit, which is currently lower than that of its peers in India, Wipro technologies has decided to increase its focus on offshore projects. It also plans to take on more fixed-time, fixed-cost projects. The current on-site to off-shore projects ratio is 55:45.

Talks are also on with venture capitalists to fund EnThink Inc, Wipro's 100 per cent subsidiary at Santa Clara, California. Some time ago, Wipro launched Wipro WebSecure, an application security framework consisting of pluggable components that companies developing e-commerce applications can buy.
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Bell dominates Indian helicopter market
New Delhi : Bell Helicopters Textron Inc. has managed to sell 10 of the 11 civilian helicopters bought by Indian clients in 1999. Eurocopter, hitherto the biggest supplier of helicopters to the Indian market, has managed to sell only one, to Oswal Agro. Thus, Bell has managed to overtake Eurocopter for the first time in India.

Currently, there are 47 Bell helicopters flying in India, against Eurocopter's 37. Bell has managed to garner 37 per cent of the Indian helicopter market, while Eurocopter is flying with 33 per cent. The other players are HAL, with a 20 per cent market share, the Russian MIL, with 5 per cent, and McDonnell Douglas with 3 per cent.
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