Government wants to amend Companies Act
New Delhi: The Companies Act will be amended in the winter session of Parliament to incorporate changes, such as a minimum paid-up capital of Rs 1 lakh for private companies and Rs 5 lakh for public companies, compulsory demat form for initial public offer of Rs 10 crore or more, and treatment of an offer to more than 50 persons as a public issue.

Law and company affairs minister Ram Jethmalani said he would like to take out some important provisions from the proposed Companies Bill and introduce them as amendments, as the comprehensive bill  will take a long time to get enacted. He told a seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations that the government is considering 17 amendments, including increasing penal provisions for offences relating to the capital market and preventing an individual from holding the office of director in more than 15 companies at the same time.
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Maruti's market share down
New Delhi: Maruti Udyog lost share in the passenger car market in September 1999, although the market grew 47 per cent from its level in September 1998. The company is still No 1, with a 66.73 per cent share of the car market during April-September 1999. The company had a market share of 68.7 per cent in the April-July period. Newcomers Santro, Matiz and the Indica have made a dent in Maruti's share.

Meanwhile, sales of medium and heavy vehicles, and of motorcycles grew an impressive 79.6 per cent and 16.63 per cent respectively in September while those of scooters fell 14.7 per cent, according to figures compiled by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

Bajaj Auto's scooter sales in fell 20.8 per cent in September, while its sale of motorcycles grew 3 per cent against the segment's growth of 16.63 per cent.
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Maruti contract for Delphi
New Delhi: Maruti Udyog has awarded a $40 million contract to Delphi Automotive Systems, the leading auto parts suppler, to supply heating and air-conditioning systems. General Motors Corporation owned Delphi till February 1999.
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Ikon to have four variants
New Delhi: Ford India is launching four versions of its mid-size luxury car Ikon -- three of them petrol and one diesel. The petrol variants will be fitted with a 1,600cc engine and the base model will be priced at Rs 4.99 lakh. The semi-loaded version will have a price tag of Rs 5.39 lakh and the fully-loaded model Rs 5.6 lakh. The diesel variant will be powered by a 1,800cc engine and will be priced at Rs 6.2 lakh.

The booking of the vehicle will be open from 3 November. The vehicle will be launched on 26 October. The company will accept 80 per cent of the car's price at the time of booking. Deliveries will start from the first week of December 1999.
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Coca-Cola to restructure operations
New Delhi: Coca-Cola India is planning to implement structural changes to streamline its organisation. It proposes to bring all bottling operations under Hindustan Coca-Cola Holdings Pvt Ltd, while cola concentrate, Cadbury Schweppes brands and the corporate office will be administered by Coca-Cola India.

At present Coke's Indian operations are organised in six companies -- Hindustan Coca-Cola Holdings and its two subsidiaries, Hindustan Coca-Cola Bottling North-West and Hindustan Coca-Cola Bottling South-West, and Bharat Coca-Cola Holdings and its two subsidiaries Bharat Coca-Cola Bottling North-East and Bharat Coca-Cola Bottling South-East.
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Digital signature software developed
Hyderabad: Adeptek Software Solutions has developed a secure and reliable electronic signature authentication software called eSign. The software uses a low-cost digitiser that can capture a signature and link it to electronic documents to create a legal equivalent of a handwritten signature.

The software combines cryptography and biometrics to create a biometric token along with a viewer module that permits the viewing and verifying of the signature, Anil Kumar, director of the company, says.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica to launch India site
New Delhi: Encyclopaedia Britannica's portal website Britannica.com will launch a customised Indian website. The Indian site will be the first country-specific website for Encyclopaedia Britannica and will guide such ventures for Australia and the UK. It will grade the "best" India-centric websites with the Britannica "seal of approval" and classify them into 19 categories so that it can guide users to find out more details on specific subjects.
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ING to source IT needs from 3 Indian companies
New Delhi: The world's largest financial services company, the ING group, is planning to outsource its information technology requirements worldwide from three Indian companies -- NIIT, Tata Consultancy Services and BFL Software. This is for the first time that the $50-billion Netherlands-based group has decided to outsource its IT project requirements to companies outside the group. The three companies have been shortlisted after a worldwide search.

The information technology expenditure of the group is close to $2 billion annually. It has close to 83,000 employees spread over 60 countries.
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Global Tele-Systems sets up EOU
Mumbai: Global Tele-systems has set up a 100 per cent export-oriented unit in Navi Mumbai, Mumbai's twin city, with a capital of Rs 12 crore. The company is also investing Rs 13 crore in its US subsidiary International Global Tele-systems.

The company hopes to boost software exports in the coming years, and these investments are part of the company's Rs 80-crore capital expenditure plan for 1999-2000.
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Duncans seeks to review debt-equity ratio
Calcutta: G.P. Goenka group company Duncans Industries will re-examine its debt-equity ratio, according to the Business Standard. It has proposed that the State Bank of India will undertake this exercise. The company has utilised only a quarter of its overseas borrowings to modernise its fertiliser unit; the remaining three-fourths have been deposted with foreign banks.

The company doesn't want to bring in these funds, estimated at Rs 122 crore, and covert them into local currency. It feels the time is not appropriate. The company had raised euro debt through foreign currency convertible bonds. The company says the unutilised portion of the borowings should be deducted from the total debt in arriving at the debt-equity ratio.
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Satyam Infoway to invest in infrastructure
Chennai: Satyam Infoway will earmark a major portion of the $75 million funds raised through its ADS issue to strengthen its infrastructure network in the country. The company's managing director R. Ramraj told The Economic Times that the company will focus on expanding its reach and setting up an international gateway.

Mr Ramraj said 40 per cent of the funds will go into beefing up the infrastructure, 20 per cent into portal development and 10 per cent into brand building.
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Mahanagar Gas calls off public offer plan
New Delhi: British Gas and the Gas Authority of India Ltd will not offload their equity in Mahanagar Gas of Mumbai as planned earlier. Mahanagar Gas has decided to postpone its public issue by two years. This will mean that British Gas will hold on to its 50 per cent stake in the company for another two years.

The proposed public issue would have reduced both British Gas and Gail's holding in the company to 35 per cent. The remaining 30 per cent was to have been split between the Mahrashtra government (10 per cent) and the public.

Mahanagar Gas says the market conditions are not congenial for the public issue.
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Intel plans fastest Pentium chip
San Francisco: Intel Corporation is planning introduction of a faster Pentium III chip on 25 October. The company said it will unveil 15 processors for desktop computers, workstations, servers and notebook computers, including the Coppermine, which has a speed of above 700 MHz. Intel said the launch will also include the next Pentium III Xeon processors, called Cascades, mainly for servers and workstations.

Recently rival Advanced Micro Devices has introduced a 700 MHz version of its Athlon chip family.
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Turner  to invest in animation programming
Gold Coast, Australia: Time Warner's entertainment company Turner Broadcasting Systems says it will invest $450 million globally over the next five years to develop animation programming. Turner Broadcasting is setting up a new studio complex near Los Angeles sometime next year. The studio will provide the infrastructure to develop original programming for Cartoon Network.

The company is concerned about competition from Nickelodeon and Fox Kids, and it is planning India-focused programmes, including a Tamil language block on Cartoon Network.
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