Singapore Airlines may exit Air-India race
New Delhi—There are reports that Singapore International Airlines (SIA) is contemplating a pull-out from the race to acquire a strategic stake in Air-India.
The Tata-SIA combine is the only bidder left in the fray for acquiring 40 per cent government stake in the loss-making national carrier and the combine has already put in place a special purpose vehicle in which the Tata group holds 51 per cent stake.
Government sources however, said that the government had not received any official word from SIA. Sources in the Tata group said they were unaware of any such move by SIA. They said that in the event of SIA pulling out, the Tatas would go ahead with the A-I bid.
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LIC takes 9 percent stake in Oriental Bank
Mumbai--The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has picked up nine per cent stake in Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), according to the chairman of the bank B D Narang. OBC has shelved its plan to form a separate insurance venture.
The move was part of LIC's plan to initiate bancassurance through public sector banks. The insurance monolith had earlier hiked its equity in Corporation Bank to 26.93 per cent from 12.32 per cent, also for the same reason.
OBC has shelved plans to form an insurance joint venture as it did not want to block its capital in an insurance business, which requires heavy capitalisation from the promoters in the initial years, Narang said.
He said however the bank was open to the idea of distributing insurance products of all types (both life and non-life), he said.
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Escotel Telecom to sell minority stake to foreign partner
New Delhi--Escorts Telecommunications, that won four new circles in the fourth cellular bidding, is planning to offload up to 49 per cent stake in the company to a foreign strategic partner and is also planning to merge Escorts Telecommuncations with Escotel, its existing cellular company.
He said Escorts Telecommunications would pick up a strategic partner and added that the merger would take place "as soon as possible."
Hong Kong-based First Pacific, which holds a 49 per cent stake in Escotel, is one of the likely contenders for a minority stake in Escorts Telecommunications. The company will have an equity base of Rs 500 crore.
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Dolphin finally gathers momentum waives activation charges
Mumbai--MTNL’s Dolphin service is finally gathering momentum but after a great deal of wooing by the company. MTNL had to offer a cut in activation charges for subscribers in Mumbai who sign up before August 4, and a special scheme for corporates, and is reported to have added almost 5,000 subscribers in July.
Almost 3,000 subscribers joined since the activation charge waiver scheme was launched on July 23. Compare this to the total of 8,867 subscribers that Dolphin had garnered since its launch in the city on February 27, and MTNL finally seems to be giving the existing operators some worthwhile competition.
MTNL has not launched the activation charge waiver scheme in Delhi.
Before the waiver of the activation charge was offered in the month June, when the rest of the cellular industry was breaking records in terms of growth in subscriber numbers, MTNL added a mere 300 subscribers in Mumbai.
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BPL wants to sell off the Maha phone circle
Mumbai—The BPL Group has is negotiating with a clutch of financial investors for buying into its Maharashtra circle.
With the Bharti group having bagged the fourth operator licence for the Maharashtra circle and Hutchison having its "hands full" with its Rs 463 crore worth of new acquisitions — Chennai, Karanataka and Andhra Pradesh — the BPL group is now looking at a warehousing or deferred sale deal for its Maharashtra circle, where it has to relinquish control following its proposed merger with the BirlaAT&T-Tata combine, which too has Maharashtra circle.
But sources said that with Bharti having obtained the fourth operator licence and Hutchison too busy with its new circles, a sale to an Indian telecom company may not happen soon.
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Bajaj motorbike sales on the rise
Mumbai-- Bajaj Auto has achieved a 56 per cent growth in motor cycles sales during July at over 50,000 units. The company sold 51,145 units in July against 32,696 units during July 2000.
However this is against a fall in the sales of geared and ungeared scooters , step-throughs and three-wheelers.
While sales of geared scooters fell to 30,630 units (from 34,056 units in July 2000), ungeared scooter sales fell to 6,069 units (7,343 units) and step-throughs to 5,411 units (9,267 units). Three-wheelers sales dipped to 14,921 units from 15,913 units in the same month last year.

However, Bajaj Auto’s total sales during July, at 1.08 lakh vehicles, was higher than the 99,279 units sold in July 2000, with the gain in motorcycle volumes making up for loss in the rest of the product categories.
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Intel plans retail push
Mumbai—Intel is on aggressive distribution push this year for retail consumer sales in a bid to offset the slowdown in enterprise sales.
With the growth rate of enterprise sales in India down to 25 per cent, the company is pushing dealers to grow its retail penetration from 75 cities to 100 by the end of the year. It also plans to induct 100 more employees and increase its base to 700 employees.
During the first six months of 2001, Intel saw its retail consumer sales in India grow by 60-70 per cent, while enterprise sales grew by only 25 per cent.
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LG goes on local sourcing drive
Kolkata--LG Electronics India Ltd (LGEIL), the Korean consumer durable major, plans to source as much as 90 percent of components locally against the 60 percent sourced locally so far and will save an outgo of $15 million this year.

Thus it has put in place a project titled glocalization, is aimed at reduction cost of components, an effect, which is expected to trickle down to reduction of cost of the finished product and thus enable it provide competitive product prices.
Apart from this, the company will also focus on tapping markets other than South Korea for critical imports. The company has appointed 100 direct vendors to meet the objectives of glocalization.
The components to be imported will include ICs, motors compressors for air-conditioners and refrigerators, defrost timers, PCBs, remote controls and FBTs.
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Fastest chip launched by Sun Micro
Palo Alto--Sun Microsystems, workstation and server-computer maker yesterday has announced the fastest yet version of its UltraSparc III microprocessor that Intel hopes to compete against with its own Itanium chip.
The latest version of the Sundesigned chip, being manufactured by Texas Instruments, runs at 900 mhz and is the first to use copper instead of aluminum to help form the inter-connection among transistors. Using copper in chips helps to boost performance and cut costs.
Sun’s UltraSparc chip will be available by October, first in work stations, then later in powerful server computers that help to run corporate networks and web sites, Palo Alto, California-based Sun said.
Sun’s chip, like Intel’s Itanium, processes 64 bits of information for every clock cycle, compared with the 32 bits for Intel’s current 32-bit Pentium III and Pentium 4 microprocessors, which are the brains of newer PCs and servers.
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Yahoo!; In a deal with Sony
New York—The US-based YAHOO! and Sony have signed a multiyear partnership that involves developing a co-branded site, an e-commerce initiative and cross-promotional endeavors. However, they did not disclose the terms of the agreement.
According to the agreement, Sony and Yahoo will develop Sony on My Yahoo! a co-branded website that is personalised for fans of Sony products and services. The site will also become the default start page for Sony Style Connect, Sony's recently launched internet access service.
Yahoo! will also consult Sony on the development of its US Group Portal, which will offer users access to Sony's content, product and services.
Apart from the above, SonyStyle.com , Sony's e-commerce site, will also be featured prominently on Yahoo! Shopping while Yahoo will promote several films from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
For its part, Sony's Vaio laptop computers will be preloaded with software that will enable consumers to quickly register for personalised Sony and Yahoo! content and services.

Shares of Yahoo were up 25 cents to $18.05 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares of Sony were up a little more than 7 percent, or $3.35, reaching $49.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Haldia Petrochem begins commercial production
Kolkata--Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd started commercial production from Wednesday. Earlier the company began its production, termed as 'integration process of the plants' from October, 2000. Since then the company was engaged in stabilising all units, upgrading quality of production, trouble shooting at specific plants and fully testing all units at full capacity, a company release said.
In this period, the company says it has cornered 22 per cent marketshare in the polymer market.
The company has restructured its corporate affairs division and Somen Das has joined as head, corporate affairs.

Henceforth, Das will be the official spokesperson for HPL in interactions with media, industry associations and NGOs.
In addition to his role, Das will also be the managing director of Haldia Riverside Estates Ltd (HREL), a wholly owned subsidiary of HPL responsible for the construction and management of a model residential township for the petrochemical complex.
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Cigna Intl closing down Indian operations
New Delhi—Cigna International is moving out of the Indian insurance sector. Officials of the US-based company remained uncommunicative on the move.

Cigna Intl was a third party administrator doing administration of health insurance policies for corporates.
The main reason for its exit is the non-preferential capital structure extended to health insurers in India.
The company is yet to finalise its Indian partner, which is important for entering the market.
At present, no Indian player is interested in entering the health insurance market on a stand-alone basis by putting in Rs 100 crore when it is known that the break-even period is long.
Finally, after the sell off of Cigna’s global property and casualty business to ACE, the company is globally facing many challenges in the post acquisition scenario.
So far, the company had been lobbying to bring down the equity capital for stand-alone health insurers to Rs 50 crore from the level of Rs 100 crore required for non-life and life players. Nevertheless, it met with little success.
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Value creation at Indal by the AV Birla group
Mumbai--The AV Birla group has initiated an integration process at Indal to augment shareholder value by implanting the cash value added (CVA) system at Indal.
Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Hindalco, said at the company's annual general meeting in Mumbai, "to instituionalise enabling processes that help us benchmark with the best in the world, we have extended CVA as our measurement metric to Indal in a phased manner."
He added, "CVA is the cornerstone of the value management structure, which we have assiduously built in all our group companies. It is a measure of shareholder's value creation to which I am personally committed, focusing as it does on three aspects namely, profitability, asset-productivity and growth." The process of deriving value from synergies between Hindalco and Indal has begun well. Integration of logistics, product rationalisation and transfer of best technologies has been initiated, Birla said.
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Joint marketing endeavour by 'Cipla and Ranbaxy
Mumbai-- Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, are in talks to jointly market two drugs, sources of the companies said.
"Cipla and Ranbaxy are at an advanced stage of finalising plans to co-market Ranbaxy's novel form of anti-infective Ciprofloxacin, and a smoking cessation drug, Bupoprion," the sources said.
Ranbaxy developed a novel once-a-day dosage form of Ciprofloxacin two years ago and licensed most global rights to Germany's Bayer, the original discoverer of Ciprofloxacin while it retained the rights for India and some other markets. It plans to launch the drug in India this year.
Ranbaxy and Cipla are the top-two players in the Ciprofloxacin market in India.
Ranbaxy and Cipla already have an arrangement to jointly market four drugs: cholesterol drug Atorvastatin, cardiovascular product Carvedilol, the anti-infective Cefpodoxime and the anti-depressant Venlafaxine.
In a co-marketing arrangement, one partner makes the drug for both companies, which then market the product under different brandnames.
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Organon in open offer for stake in Infar India
Mumbai—Organon Participations, owned by Dutch chemical group Akzo Nobel, is making an open offer to buy 24.04 per cent of Indian pharmaceuticals company Infar India, according to the merchant banker of the former.
Organon has offered to buy 1,460,965 shares at Rs 285 a share -- a premium of 19 per cent to the stock's closing price on Tuesday.
This follows an agreement by Organon with the Indian founders of the company to acquire 25.53 per cent of Infar's shares at Rs 285, managers to the issue HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India said in a statement.
After the acquisition, Organon's stake in the company will rise to 75.96 per cent, it said. It said the offer would open from September 14 to October 13.
Organon is wholly-owned by Akzo Nobel through two fully-owned holding companies.
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Bonanza for US-64 Re-investment Plan
Kolkata— A bonanza is in the offing for investors under US-64 Re-investment Plan and the Children Growth Plan.
The UTI top brass has decided that dividend re-investment under the two plans will be at a notional value of Rs 10. This means investors will now receive additional units at a face value of Rs 10 per unit.
Earlier, when the market price of US 64 units was higher, investors had to obtain the new units at a premium to the face value. Mercifully, this time there will be no such payout from the dividend amount.
Additionally, the investor may end up getting more units, if the Net Asset Value-based sale price is lower than Rs 10 per unit in January 2002, when UTI would have declared the NAV of the US 64 scheme.
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Titan-Debenhams talks
New Delhi--Titan Industries Ltd is in talks with Debenhams jewellery retail chain of the UK for the export of Titan’s jewellery to countries in Europe.
Besides eyeing similar other retail chains in the Far East, West Asia and the UK, Titan is also targeting Indians based in the US.
Titan already exports jewellery to the Damas retail chain in West Asia.
Bhaskar Bhat, deputy-managing director, Titan said at the press conference organised to celebrate Tanishq's fifth anniversary, "the rationale behind the initiative is that it is a huge market and ensures huge profits."
In a marketing initiative, the company is offering up to 25 per cent discount on all products until August 14 to celebrate the occasion.
TIL had registered a 35 per cent increase in growth last year and the growth this year has been pegged at about 25 per cent.
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