Government not against foreign stake in AI
Mumbai: Civil aviation minister Sharad Yadav says the government is not opposed to a foreign airline holding equity in Air-India. The majority stake should, however, be with Indian nationals and shareholders, Mr Yadav said.

"Air-India, Indian Airlines and the Airport Authority of India will have to be made viable," the minister said, adding the stipulation against investment by foreigners is only for domestic airlines. He also revealed that a new civil aviation policy is being finalised.
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Infosys, Australian co in alliance
Mumbai: Infosys Technologies is planning a major foray into e-commerce and in order to strengthen its technological and marketing sides, it has roped in a strategic partner, Australian company xIBA Internetworking Business Architects. The two companies have signed a strategic alliance agreement. Infosys intends to provide comprehensive end-to-end solutions with xIBA offering web design and development techniques. xIBA is a leading company in web development and e-business solutions.

Infosys has opened new offices in Frankfurt and Brussels, to enhance its presence in Europe.
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Shell plan for investment off
New Delhi: Royal Dutch Shell's proposed plan  to make investments in India jointly with Saudi Aramco has been shelved, according to Shell group managing director Jeroen van der Veer. Shell and Saudi Aramco had proposed to form a joint venture with one of India's public sector oil companies to set up a marketing and distribution company and to build a refinery.

Mr Van der Veer said Shell is primarily interested in the retail market in India. Even though present policy bars foreign players from the retail end of this sector, Shell is in talks with the government.
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Intel picks up stake in Bharti group co
New Delhi: The Bharti group has persuaded Intel Corporation to pick up a stake in its software company, Bharti Telesoft. Intel will take a minority stake in Bharti Telesoft, being created by Bharti Enterprises. Intel has already picked up a 20 per cent stake in another Bharti group venture, Bharti Telespatiale, an Internet and VSAT company.

Intel has so far offered funding for four Indian companies, Avigna Technologies, ESS Software, Rediff on the Net and Network Solutions.
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Dispute over stakes in Gujarat gas venture
Ahmedabad: British Gas, one of the promoters of the $165-million Gujarat Pipavav LNG Company, has disputed the National Thermal Power Corporation's claim that it will hold the largest stake of 26 per cent in the project. The British company said under no circumstances will it dilute its present 51 per cent stake in the company.

NTPC has proposed that British Gas reduce its stake to 24 per cent so that the balance 50 per cent can be distributed to financial institutions, the  Gujarat government and other partners. GPCL is proposed to be a joint venture company. It has been set up with British Gas International taking a 51 per cent stake and Seaking Engineers the rest.

NTPC and the Gujarat government are interested in picking up equity in the company and NTPC has signed a memorandum with the promoters of the project according to which British Gas and Seaking Engineers are expected to offload a part of their equity to accommodate the new entrants.
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Financial Technologies, IBM tie up
Mumbai: Financial Technologies India, a financial services software products company, has tied up with IBM India as an IBM Advanced Business Partner. Under this arrangement, IBM and Financial Technologies will jointly work to provide solutions for financial markets in India. Financial Technologies will license its application software products and work closely with IBM on key technology areas and IBM will provide technology and joint marketing support.
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AHP hikes stake in Cyanamid
Mumbai: American Home Products Corporation has increased its stake in its Indian arm, Cyanamid Agro, to 68 per cent from 39.9 per cent. This has been done by merging its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary ACCO with Cyanamid Agro. Cyanamid Agro has also sold its manufacturing complex at Valsad in Gujarat to a major shareholder of the company, Atul.

Atul is acquiring the facilities through its wholly-owned subsidiary AgroMore, which will supply, under an agreement with Cyanamid its agrochemical output worth over Rs 50 crore every year. Atul’s holding in Cyanamid India will now stand at 14 per cent against an earlier 26 per cent.

Cyanamid is expecting to have a sales turnover of Rs 200 crore per annum in three years’ time.
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Usha Sriram acquires Hassan hotel
Bangalore: Usha Sriram Hotels has acquired Hotel Southern Star in Hassan in Karnataka. The group will now have five hotels and it is planning to establish a strong presence in the mid-market segment in metros and other leading cities. It has two properties in Karnataka, Hotel Rama in Bangalore and Southern Star in Mysore, and plans to set up hotels in Kochi in Kerala and Bhubaneswar in Orissa.

The group is also into time sharing arrangements and has signed an agreement with the US-based Resort Condominium International.
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Chase unit to invest in Microland
New Delhi: Chase Asian Equity Associates’ Mauritius-based arm Indocean Network Services is picking up a 30.09 per cent stake in Microland. The company will infuse Rs 28.2 crore into the Bangalore-based IT firm. With this, Pradeep Kar’s equity in Microland will come down from 94.86 per cent to 67.22 per cent.

The rest of the equity is held by non-resident Indians.
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Novartis for fresh investment in Goa unit
Mumbai: Novartis India is making a fresh investment of Rs 10 crore in addition to the already made investment of Rs 30 crore in its unit in Goa. The funds will be used to build new facilities which will replace its ageing Quinalphos molecule. The company is also planning to sell its agrochemical unit at Panoli in Gujarat, which has been used to make Quinalphos.

The pharma company has set up a web-based information organiser HealthNewsCast to provide medical news to healthcare professionals. The service is based on interactive kiosks.
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DLF Cement in talks with Lafarge
Mumbai: DLF Cement is in talks with French cement major Lafarge for sale of the promoters’ stake in the company. Financial institutions confirmed that the promoters have approached them for permission for the stake sale. The promoters own 42 per cent of the equity in the company.

DLF Cement has large debts, Rs 110 crore to International Finance Corporation alone and around Rs 20 crore to the Industrial Development Bank of India. The company has a plant in Jaipur with an installed capacity to produce 1.4 million tonnes of cement per annum. The company posted a loss of Rs 69.94 crore in 1998-99 on a turnover of Rs 280.31 crore.
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Madison unveils M:Cube
Mumbai: Media and advertising company Madison Communications has developed a media model called Madison Media Maximiser, or M:Cube, which its creator Sam Balsara says is the first concerted Indian system that will determine return on media investment and help direct a prospective investor to the most high return markets.

"M:Cube uses a variety of readily available statistical tools to establish a realistic equation for each market in step 1 of the process. At step 2 it computes the cost of reaching one member of the target audience in different markers . It then finally arrives at the least media cost solution of achieving a 1,000 unit of sales in each market," says Mr Balsara. The system offers data on sales, distribution and research over a period two or three years.
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GE denies NBC sale
New York: General Electric has denied that it is offering its NBC television network to Time Warner for $25 billion. Media czar Rupert Murdoch had told his own Fox News Channel that NBC was for sale.

Time Warner operates WB Network, a competitor to the big four networks, NBC, Walt Disney’s ABC, CBS and Fox. There has been speculation that GE may spin off NBC as a separate, publicly-traded company.
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BSkyB forced to cut Manchester United stake
London: BSkyB has cut its stake in European soccer champions Manchester United to 9.99 per cent. The Rupert Murdoch-controlled company has been forced to cut the stake as the Premier League ruled that it should hold less than 10 per cent in Manchester United as it has a 9.9 per cent stake in another soccer club Leeds United. BSkyB, which holds the pay television rights for Premier League matches, had an 11.1 per cent stake in Manchester United following its unsuccessful $1 billion takeover bid for the top British club.
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Coke plan to buy Orangina blocked
Paris: The French government has blocked the sale of Orangina, owned by Pernod Richard, to Coca-Cola Co. Coca-Cola has been attempting for the last two and a half months to acquire Orangina. French finance and industry minister Jean Glavany said Coca-Cola’s modified offer for the Pernod soft drinks arm after French anti-trust authorities raised competition concerns was inadequate.
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Pfizer talks of legalities
New York: Pfizer launched a new legal battle against Warner-Lambert’s $66.8-billion merger with American Home Products, saying Warner-Lambert broke the terms of an existing contract in order to keep Pfizer at bay. Warner-Lambert is planning to call off an agreement with Pfizer to jointly market anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor.
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Vodafone to send formal offer
Dusseldorf: Vodafone AirTouch chief executive Chris Gent says his company will formally send Mannesmann shareholders its takeover offer soon. Mr Gent said the outcome of the bid will be known at the end of January 2000.
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Gentia, IBM in tie-up
Boston: Gentia Software has entered into an arrangement with IBM’s consulting arm to offer its products, which include software for analysing large corporate databases. Gentia specialises in balanced scorecard analysis, which helps companies evaluate business by sorting through financial and operating data and other information. The product will now be incorporated into an IBM service for analysing company business data.
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Daewoo Electronics revival okayed
Seoul: South Korean creditors of Daewoo agreed to a package of steps to revive the electronics unit of the crumbling conglomerate. Local creditors saw good growth prospects for Daewoo Electronics and agreed to convert 394.7 billion won of debts into equity and buy 1.07 trillion won worth of convertible bonds from the company.
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Mannesmann to spin off non-core activities
Frankfurt: Mannesmann has evolved a new plan to demerge its non-telecommunications activities, which analysts say is a new attempt to unlock value in its battle against the Vodafone takeover attempt. Mannesmann said it plans to accelerate the flotation of its engineering and automotive units to the middle of 2000.

Mannesmann’s chief executive Klaus Esser, who is credited with turning the company into one of the most-dynamic telecom firms in the world, wanted to hold on to the business partly as a poison pill against predators. The company, which plans to reduce the stake in its engineering and automotive units to under 50 per cent, hopes to raise around 5 billion euros, a useful tool against the unwanted bid.
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Delphi acquiring Lucas Diesel
Chicago: Delhi Automotive Systems is acquiring Lucas Diesel Systems from US-based automotive and aerospace components group TRW for $871 million. This will increase Delhi’s exposure to the European diesel engine market and make it the second largest supplier of diesel fuel injection systems, behind Robert Bosch.
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