Tata Power may buy stake in Dabhol Power
Mumbai: Tata Power has announced its intention to consider buying Dabhol Power, and said it was assessing various options that were available for it to take over Enrons stake in the company. Tata Power is said to be in informal talks with the government on the project.

However, the companys managing director, Adi Engineer, made it clear that the decision would be taken only after the current imbroglio between Dabhol Power Company and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board was sorted out. Both the state government and Dabhol Power Company are yet to officially receive any formal intimation to this effect from Tata Power.

Enron India, the major shareholder of Dabhol Power Company has submitted a number of options to the central government to sell Enrons equity in the project. The price of the sale has been pegged at one billion dollars.
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Satyam Computers to close down subsidiaries
Hyderabad: Satyam Computer Services will be closing four subsidiaries, three of which are overseas. The move has come about in order to consolidate operations and leverage the benefits of a single, unified global Satyam brand.

The three overseas subsidiaries which are to be closed down include Satyam Europe, Satyam Asia-Pacific and Satyam Japan, the operations of which will now be looked after directly, by Satyam Computers. These subsidiaries had been opened to reduce Satyams exposure to the US markets, to facilitate new customers, and for recruiting local talent as well as help in visa processing for associates.

The fourth subsidiary to be closed is Dr Millennium, which was set up to handle Y2K related products exclusively, and has now outlived its relevance.

The subsidiaries, had heavy operative costs, making losses to the tune of Rs 8.35 crore (Satyam Europe), Rs 4.30 crores (Satyam Japan), Rs 0.50 crores (Satyam Asia), and Rs 9.02 crores (Dr Millennium).
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MindTree gets second round of funding
Bangalore: MindTree Consulting received its second round of funding of 14.4 million dollars from a new group of investors. MindTree is the IT consulting company founded by former Wipro bigwigs headed by former Wipro Technologies chairman Ashok Soota.

The fresh funding will help MindTree with its expansion plans, including raising its headcount from 450 at present to 750 before the year end. The company also plans to allot 16.5 per cent of the equity for an Esop, and also become an SEI certified company.
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SBI Home Finance to raise capital base
Kolkata: SBI Home Finance plans to increase its capital base by Rs 110 crore, for which it may opt for the preferential allotment of shares to financial institutions such as HDFC, LIC, UTI and GIC. It now has a capital base of a mere Rs 15 crores.

The company hopes to restructure its asset-liability portfolio, and arm itself to achieve larger housing finance targets with a view to achieve 40 to 45 per cent growth, year on year, over the next few years.

Both HDFC and SBI are its two largest stake holders, SBI accounting for 26 per cent, together with some of its associates, HDFC 14 per cent, and 40 per cent with the public.

The company plans to come up with a number of customised retail products including loans connected with decoration, furnishing, repairs and modification. Its major share of revenues now comes from conventional housing loans.

Although the company made a loss of Rs 21.7 crores in 2000-01, and has been surviving through a line of credit of Rs 200 crores, it expects to turn around, with a set target of Rs 220 crore of sanctions this year, resulting in disbursements of Rs 180 crores. The company is said to have already made Rs 62 crore worth of business in the first four months of the year.
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Another open offer for Centak Chemicals
Kolkata: Akzo Nobel Chemicals International, the 93 per cent owner of Centak Chemicals will come up with an open offer to buy the rest of the seven per cent holding in the company, at Rs 200 a share. After this open offer, the company will get de-listed from the stock exchanges. The offer will remain open from August 13 this year to February 12, 2002.

Akzo Nobel Chemicals, which is a subsidiary of Akzo Nobel BV, earlier acquired 18.01 per cent of the shares from the public through an open offer at Rs 200 a share. This was after it acquired 74.98 per cent of the shares after it bought out the Indian promoters, Century Enka and Century Textiles and Industries, when its stake went up to 92.99 per cent.
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Wipro gets injunction in Santoor soap case
Bangalore: Wipro, the manufacturer of Santoor soap got an injunction order from the Hyderabad city civil court against Kishoresons Toiletries, manufacturers of ETA soap. Through the injunction, Kishoresons was ordered against using packaging identical with that of Santoor for their soap, and infringing their copyright of the design. It was Wipros allegation that Kishoresons was using a wrapper similar in colour scheme and layout with that of its Santoor soap.

According to Wipro, Santoor is the largest selling soap in Andhra Pradesh, and this success had lead a number of operators to imitate the ingredients and package and ride on its success. Kishoresons Toiletries was one such company, according to Wipro.
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Telco July sales up
New Delhi: Automobile major Telco, which has been seeing dismal sales and plummeting margins, said it had shown a 4.2 per cent increase in the number of vehicles sold in July, vis--vis the same month last year. It sold 11,781 vehicles in July this year, as against 11,309 vehicles during the same month last year. However, as against its June sales of 12,007, the numbers were 1.9 per cent down.

The higher sales was seen from medium and heavy vehicles which went up 18.1 per cent, while its indigenously built car Indica also showed a spurt of 18.5 per cent in July. Indica numbers went up from 3550 last July to 4205 this July, but was yet lower than the 4758 sold in June this year. Indica needs to sell at least 5000 units a month for it to achieve cash break even.
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Rosa Power wants terms loans from FIs
New Delhi: Rosa Power Supply Co., the AV Birla group company has sought term loans from leading financial institutions in order to raise Rs 1,000 crores. Rosa has also approached insurance giants like LIC and GIC. The money has been sought to fund investment for its coal powered 567 MW project coming up at Shajahanpur in UP at a cost of Rs 2840 crores.

The request comes at a time when financial institutions are fighting shy of funding any power projects, in the wake of their experience with the protracted stalemate with the Dabhol Power Company. Two of these financial institutions, IDBI and IFCI have even taken a decision not to take exposure in any more power projects, except for modernisation and expansion.

The project, which was conceived in 1993, is yet to achieve financial closure primarily due to problems related to escrow cover, the guarantee mechanism and the health of the state electricity board.
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Agilent Technologies holds back investment plans
Kolkata: Given the economic downturn in the US, Agilent Technologies is said to have postponed all plans to invest in India. The 9.4 billion dollar Silicon Valley based company was to have invested in a call centre business, apart from stepping up R&D activity, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Agilent Technologies India.

The slowdown had resulted in a steep fall in the companys order book position, down by 40 per cent, with some of its biggest clients like Motorola, Lucent and Nortel affected by it.

The company had even sold off its Rs 96 crore business healthcare solutions division to Philips Medical Systems India earlier this month, as part of its global sale of the business to Philips for 1.7 billion dollars. Besides, it had also brought down its employee levels marginally.

Agilents business in India involves making and testing measurement equipment for a range of networking protocols, mainly for virtual private networks.
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