Tisco top steelmaker, says US body
Mumbai: Tata Iron and Steel Company has been ranked first among 12 of the world's top steel firms by US consultancy World Steel Dynamics.

Tisco beat French steel giant Usinor and South Korea's Pohang Iron and Steel Co, which came second and third, CSN of Brazil, which came fourth, and Shanghai Baosteel, China's largest steelmaker, which came fifth.

World Steel Dynamics ranked the companies against several parameters, including operating costs, ownership of low cost iron ore, location, workforce, electricity costs, product quality, balance sheet and position in the domestic market, and Tisco scored a full ten on two counts -- ownership of low cost iron ore and coking coal, and on its location vis--vis raw materials. Its lowest score of five was on ownership of downstream steel using businesses. Tisco's cost of manufacturing steel, at 152 dollars per tonne during 2000-2001 was also one of the lowest in the world.

"We have been ranked India's only world class steel maker," Tisco managing director told the press at the announcement of the ranking.
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Tatas up stake in group companies
Mumbai: The Tata group has made good use of the bottoming out of the stock market to raise its stake in key group companies, like Tata Steel, Tata Engineering and Tata Tea, the last financial year, putting in over Rs 200 crore for the purpose.

Thus, in Tata Steel, their stake went up from 24.2 per cent to 26.2 per cent, from 22.8 per cent in Tata Engineering to 25.3 per cent, and in Tata Tea from 26.5 per cent to 30 per cent. Roughly, Rs 87.7 crore has gone into buying 73 lakh Tata Steel shares, Rs 67.1 crores for buying about 66 lakh shares of Telco, and Rs 51.8 crore for 19.5 lakh shares of Tata Tea. The Tatas raised their hike marginally in Tata Chemicals, from 29.9 per cent to 30.1 per cent, at a cost of Rs 1.30 crore for over three lakh shares.

In February, Tata Industries raised its stake in Tata Advanced Materials from 77 per cent to 90.7 per cent through an open offer at Rs 15 per share. The scrip, listed on the Bangalore and Mumbai exchanges, had not been trading actively.

The Tata Group’s stake in Tata Power went up to 32 per cent from 31.9 per cent last year after the merger of The Andhra Valley Power Supply Co and The Tata HydroElectric Power Supply Co with the company.
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Koshika sells stake to Kathuria, gains lifeline
New Delhi: Usha group company Koshika Telecom, which was facing a crucial time with licensing dues of about Rs 300 crore looming before it got a lifeline through an investment from Chicago based NRI Chiranjiv Kathuria and his associates.

The deal is for 49 per cent stake in Koshika Telecom for 120 million dollars, with management participation. The new partners will nominate a joint managing director while Koshika will have a chairman.

The company has licence for running cellular services in four circles of Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), Bihar and Orissa. The services are operational in Uttar Pradesh (East) as the licence for other three circles were cancelled due to non-payment of dues. The company now plans to consolidate its operations in all the circles, and increase its subscriber base to five lakh from the present two lakh.
The company has file application with the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for approval.
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New i-Flex development unit at Chennai
New Delhi: Financial services software company i-Flex Solutions on Wednesday is putting up another offshore development centre in Chennai at an investment of Rs 15 crore. The new centre will focus on applications in the areas of wealth management and investment. The facility will concentrate on the development of customised software for large investment banks, private banks, securities trading houses, investment advisory firms and brokerage units
The centre, which will employ over 125 people by March 2002, follows the launch of its payments development centre at Pune in January this year.
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Modis open offer brings over 35 per cent stake
New Delhi: The Modi's claim to have already collected over 35 per cent shares of Modi Rubber Ltd through its ongoing open offer, and believe that they would cross the 70 per cent majority figure before the offer closes.

This includes 44 per cent shares which would come from the Indian institutional investors, nearly 12 per cent by foreign institutional investors and 12 per cent shares tendered by the public under the ongoing offer. It is believed that the Modis had to fork out Rs 130 crore for acquiring this 70 per cent stake, of which Rs 80 crore would go towards the open offer and Rs 50 crore towards payment to the financial institutions.
Of the 44 per cent FI stake, 22 per cent is believed to have been tendered under the open offer, and an agreement has been reached with the Modis to buy out the remaining 22 per cent in cash.
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Inquiry into closure of Coca-Cola plants
Mumbai: US multinational Coca-Cola had closed down its two plants in Mumbai and Pune. This information was given to the Maharashtra Legislative Council by minister of state Jaydutta Kshirsagar, in answer to a question by Prakash Jawdekar.
The State Industrial Corporation has also ordered an enquiry into the closure of Poona Bottling Company at Pirangut in Pune, in order to ascertain whether it had used the old machinery to start a plant at Wada.
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General Motors almost ready for Vectra launch
Bangalore: General Motors India is expected to launch the Vectra, its D segment offering in India, towards January 2002 . It is currently undergoing homologation tests (tests to check suitability to Indian conditions) at the Automotive Research Association of India in Pune.

The company plans to keep its price more competitive by effecting cost reduction in its interiors, but keeping overall features intact. The company has had to opt for the more expensive route of imports -- duty rates of 125 per cent would make it quite expensive -- since it was not confident of selling 10,000 to 12,000 of these cars in a year, which is the minimum that would make an SKD or CKD route viable.
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Mutual fund from L&T
Mumbai: Larsen and Toubro is planning an entry into mutual funds so as to expand its financial sector activities. The company has filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Board of India for registering its fund.

The fund is to be sponsored by L&T’s non-banking financial company L&T Finance. The company is also in the process of setting up the asset management company and trustee company for launching the mutual fund schemes. L&T Capital, the wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T Finance, is likely to be the AMC.

L&T Capital now undertakes all fee-based activities, while L&T Finance undertakes fund-based business. L&T Capital which has a capital base of Rs 5 crore, will need recapitalisation in order to meet the Sebi requirement of Rs 10 crore as minimum capital for an AMC. L&T is working on a strategy to re-position L&T Capital from an in-house treasury management arm to a full-fledged investment bank. Accordingly, L&T Capital will undertake equity broking, besides undertaking merchant banking assignments on behalf of issuers of equity and debt, including investment banking.
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Zee owners sold Zee stock, aided market manipulation
Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India has found that Delgrada Ltd, an overseas corporate body (OCB) owned by Zee chairman Subhash Chandra, had sold a large quantity of Zee shares and remitted over Rs 450 crore outside India during the period January 2000 to March 2001. Most of these shares were sold through Triumph International Finance, a broking firm associated with Ketan Parekh. Delgrada held as much as 42.55 per cent of Zee Telefilms’ equity as on September 2000.

The investigations by Sebi have also prima facie revealed that the entities associated with Ketan Parekh have manipulated the price of the Zee stock. The investigation has pointed out that the company has allotted 2,48,96,000 shares of Zee Telefilms for acquisition of 100 per cent equity of Zee Multimedia Worldwide to two equity shareholders of erstwhile Zee Multimedia. Of these two shareholders, one is Delgrada, an OCB registered in Mauritius and of which 100 per cent beneficiary is Mr Subhash Chandra, chairman of Zee Group. Zee Telefilms officials however, believe there was nothing illegal about the transaction for which Reserve Bank of India approval had been duly sought.
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BNP Paribas to go retail in big way, to tie up with SBI Cardif
Mumbai: BNP Paribas is tying up with SBI Cardif to sell life insurance products to its customers as part of personal finance service.

The move meets with the intention of the bank to be a 'lifecycle' bank for the middle class, where it will keep an eye on all the financial needs of the customer, and meet all the personal finance planning needs through appropriate pre-researched, well-recommended products.

The bank is yet to decide as to whom to tie up with for selling non-life insurance products.

The bank plans to focus on the individual investor, wanting to reach a figure of 2,50,000 customers in the first two years. At present, the retail segment accounts for less than five per cent of its Rs 2690 crore balance sheet.
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ICICI Bank launches ‘Sparsh’ online kiosks
Mumbai: ICICI Bank has launched ‘Sparsh’, an interactive touch-screen kiosk that will be installed at its ATM centres and branches. ‘Sparsh’ will provide customers free access to online services provided by the ICICI group.

The services include Infinity, an online banking facility from ICICI Bank, ICICIdirect online share trading, ICICIconnect, linking all retail services of the ICICI group under one umbrella and billjunction.com for paying bills online.
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HLL draws up revival plan for Modern Foods
Kochi: Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) has drawn up an ambitious revival plan for Modern Food Industries (India) Ltd (MFIL).

The strategy includes modernisation with an investment of Rs 3.5 crores, product development, marketing and distribution initiatives, improvement of operational efficiencies, safety and quality control. A settlement has also been signed with both the All India Modern Bakeries Workers’ Federation and National Federation of Modern Food Industries Employees, so as to help in the smooth implementations of the strategy.

MFIL is the first major PSU in which HLL hast had acquired 74 per cent equity under the PSU divestment process.

HLL has had experience turning around other sick companies like Union Home Products in Mangalore, now an HLL detergent factory, Stepan Chemicals, with its soap factory in Rajpura (Punjab) and Vashisti Detergents Limited, an associate company of HLL.
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Trent plans retail chain for groceries
Mumbai: Trent Ltd, a Tata Group company, is planning a retail chain of groceries. The venture will be under a new brandname which the company subsequently plans to build upon. Trent, already runs its own retail outlet chain, Westside, which primarily retails merchandise like garments and household items.
While there is speculation that Trent is in talks with the RPG group for a tie up, neither Trent nor RPG have confirmed it.

The Indian retailing business now at over Rs 400 crore per annum is expected to go up to Rs 2,500 crore within the next five years. Trent Ltd currently runs around seven stores under its Westside brand name across the country and plans to set up two or three more by the end of March 2002.
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Eli Lilly ties up with Austin Shasun for R&D
Chennai: Austin Shasun LLC, a joint venture company of the Chennai-based Shasun Chemicals and Drugs Ltd, a supplier of chemical manufacturing and process development services to the pharmaceutical industry, and Austin Chemical Company of Chicago, has signed a research and development contract with Eli Lilly and Company.

Recently, an R&D agreement was signed between the companies, which allows a dedicated team of scientists at Austin Shasun, LLC to work on process research and development projects for Eli Lilly. This agreement enables Austin Shasun LLC to support Eli Lilly’s drug discovery and drug development programme.
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Elder to bring in cardiac, anti-hypertensive drugs
Mumbai: Elder Pharmaceuticals is planning to in-license products from cardiac care as well as anti-hypertensive segment during this fiscal. The company would be launching Disgren and Glytrin in the next few weeks in the cardiac care segment, which will be licensed from a Spanish and a UK-based company respectively.

Glytrin is a unique spray product clears the blood veins in case of an attack. Maiorad and Afloxan are to be launched by December, which will be in-licensed from an Italian company called Rofta, for which approval from the Drug Controller General of India is awaited.

In the anti-hypertensive segment, the company is in talks with a Japanese firm, Fujisawa, to launch a fourth generation cephalosporin.

The company is also planning to enter into a joint-venture with the German-based Paul Harfmarn — leaders in surgical products. Elder Pharma has only last week launched its marketing surgical products from the German company.
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Indian Hotels to tie up with SATS for air catering
Mumbai: Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) is in negotiations with Singapore Airport Terminal Services Ltd (SATS), a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, for a 51:49 joint venture to handle the air catering business. Negotiations are on and the terms governing the transaction have not yet been finalised.
SATS is a major provider of in-flight catering and ground handling services in Asia, with over 50 years of experience and presence in eight Asian airports through several joint ventures. Its in-flight meal catering facilities in Singapore have a daily output of over 60,000 in-flight meals per day.
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Century Consultants declared defaulter
Mumbai: The Stock Exchange Mumbai (BSE) has declared Century Consultants Ltd, one of its members, as a defaulter on Wednesday for failure to meet obligations to their clients and liabilities to the exchange. Century Consultant is promoted by Arvind Johry and Associated who also has promoted an IT company Cyberspace Infosys.

BSE had already declared another broking firm, E’L Dorado Guarantee Ltd as a defaulter on July 6.

Both the members of the exchange have been suspended from trading from the exchange for the indefinite period. While E’L Dorado was refrained from trading since May 31, Century Consultant was restrained from doing any business from March 17, 2001.
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Tata Steel ferro-chrome closed down
Mumbai: Tata Steel, the Tata group flagship, has shut down its ferro-chrome unit in Bamnipal, Orissa, after the company's world steel dynamics' management decided that operations there have become "unviable".

Managing director J J Irani said: "With international ferro-chrome prices crashing, we decided that operations at the plant would no longer be viable." The plant has a 50,000 tonne per annum capacity. Exorbitant power costs was cited as one of the main reasons for the unit to become unviable.

However, the Tatas plan to build on the ferro-chrome business in the long term. The company was planning to set up a 120,000 tonne unit in Australia, but is now considering South Africa, with a better power structure linked to international ferro-chrome prices, as an alternative.
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Tata Steel in joint venture for captive port
Mumbai: Tata Steel has entered into a joint venture agreement with Martrade of Germany to develop a captive berth at the Haldia port in West Bengal.

The company's managing director-designate B Muthuraman said the captive berth, at a project cost of Rs 35 crore, will have the capacity to handle three million tonne of cargo annually. Tata Steel imports significant quantities of coal and exports various steel products, which necessitated a captive port.
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'infrastructure convergence cell' at KPMG
Mumbai: KPMG India has set up an eight member infrastructure convergence cell comprising of senior executives of the company such as directors and associate directors.

The rationale for such a cell was that convergence was taking place not only in the ICE (information, communication and entertainment) sector, but also in the infrastructure sector.

In the UK, Scottish Power, which distributes power, has forayed into water distribution. Centrica, an offshoot of British Gas, supplies gas and has also positioned as a total solutions provider to the customer. Such a scenario was likely in India too, according to KPMG, especially with power companies who are regulated by government cap of 16 per cent internal rate of return.

An Indian example is that of BSES, which is basically a power company and has now got into the telecom sector through a subsidiary. Although BSES operates in two regulated sectors, power and telecom, it has the added advantage of functioning as an ISP, which is an unregulated industry. It can also set up data centres.
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Mascon calls off Maars merger
Mumbai : Mascon Global has decided to call off its proposed merger with the Chennai-based Maars Software International, attributing the decision to prevailing market conditions.

On the other hand, both companies would explore the possibility of a business arrangement synergising their respective strengths.

The proposed merger was supposed take place on the share-swap basis of 1:9 (one share of Mascon for every nine shares held by Maars). The merger was planned on the basis that Mascon would get access to Maars' strong UK market and the latter would get access to Mascon's US markets.

On the revenue front too, Mascon expected the Maars acquisition to add revenues of around $25 million in the current fiscal as against $16 million last year.
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