DSQ plans private placement
Chennai: Dinesh Dalmia, managing director of DSQ Software, is negotiating with a second group for private placement of up to 30 per cent of equity stake of the company. The company had been in talks with BancAmerica Equity Partners for this purpose. DSQ Software is convening an extraordinary general meeting on 12 November to get shareholder approval for issuing one crore equity shares on private placement/preferential basis. Mr Dalmia said the issue price will be at least Rs 275 a share.

Funds accruing from the private placement will be used to retire all the debts of the company. The company has total outstanding of around Rs 175 crore, including working capital borrowings.
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ITC will have 3 divisions for IT business
Calcutta: The proposed information technology business of tobacco major ITC will have three distinct divisions – Europe, North America and India. The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ITC Infotech, UK, will look after the European and North American operations, while the in-house information systems division will look after the business in India.

Company sources said ITC will leverage its brand and its understanding of the Indian market to promote its IT business. The company has upgraded its development centre in Bangalore with the latest communication facilities for training software personnel.
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Inertia to commission second beer unit
New Delhi: Inertia Industries, maker of the Sandpiper brand of beer, is to start commercial production of beer at its new brewery in Aurangabad from 20 November. The brewery will have an annual production capacity of five lakh kilolitres.

Inertia Industries has invested Rs 40 crore in the second production unit. It will invest another Rs 10 crore to increase production capacity to five lakh cases per month by end-2000.
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Two-phase divestment for Hind Copper
New Delhi: The cabinet has approved an alternative disinvestment scheme for Hindustan Copper, rejecting the proposal of the Disinvestment Commission. The scheme involves a two-phase divestment of the government stake in the company. In the first phase the Khetri unit along with the Taloja plant will be turned into a separate company. The asset value of these two units will comprise the company’s 49 per cent stake in the new company. A strategic partner will bring in 51 per cent stake.

In the second phase, the remaining portion of the company – the Indian Copper Complex at Ghatshila in Bihar and the Malanjkhand project in Madhya Pradesh -- will be restructured by closing down unviable mines and reducing surplus staff.
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GM's Corsa launch on Saturday
Mumbai: General Motors is expected to unveil its Opel Corsa on 13 November at New Delhi. General Motors’ president and chief operating officer G. Richard Wagoner will be present on the occasion. The three-box mid-size luxury car is positioned in direct competition with Fiat’s Siena, Ford’s Ikon and Hyundai’s Accent.
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Volvo gets nod for preference share issue
New Delhi: The government has cleared Volvo’s $22 million preference share issue. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board had earlier given its approval for the proposal and now commerce minister Murasoli Maran has given his okay.

The other approvals include the proposals of Bharti Tele- Spatial to set up a company to participate in telecom ventures with a foreign investment of Rs 43 crore, of Infotech Enterprises to increase its foreign equity from 12 per cent to 26 per cent and of travel goods company Samsonite to increase its foreign equity to 65 per cent.
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Emami to launch new healthcare products
Calcutta: Emami group plans to launch several new products in the healthcare segment. The Rs 350-crore group intends to take on Dabur India and Baidyanath, two players in the ayurveda segment.

The products planned include 'Sona Chandi Chyawanprash' and a new honey brand. Nabendu Gupta, vice-president, marketing, of the group, said the group intends to create new market segments in personal care and launch differentiated products in the healthcare category.
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Goldstone  to acquire US companies
Hyderabad: Infotech company Goldstone Engineering is planning acquisition of two US-based software development companies, Prime Soft and Fortech Software, at a total cost of $4 to 4.5 million. The acquisitions will be funded through a stock swap. Goldstone will finally merge these two companies.
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Bilt to hold HRD exercise
New Delhi: Ballarpur Industries, the L.M. Thapar group  flagship company, has introduced a human resources development exercise to identify competencies and to equip its manpower with expertise to handle competition arising in the new millennium. The programme is also fashioned to help its staff deal with a situation in whch the company will acquire new companies and double its present capacitates to 6 lakh tonnes in the next five years.

The company has an HR budget of Rs 10 crore for 1999. It is conducting two employee-development programmes with the help of London-based Seville Holdworth to identify the competencies of its middle and senior level managers.
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Sahara awaits nod for foreign pilots
New Delhi: Sahara Airlines is awaiting the government’s approval to induct some 10 foreign pilots to go with its fleet expansion and modernisation. The airline has applied to the civil aviation ministry for allowing batches of foreign pilots to operate its Boeing 737-400, 737-700 and new 737-800 range of aircraft for short periods.

The ministry is understood to have raised several procedural questions regarding the safety and security aspects of foreign pilots flying aircraft in India.
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Monsanto, Novartis in merger talks
Chicago: Monsanto and Novartis are understood to be in talks for a possible merger. Both companies refused to comment, but if the merger does indeed take place and passes anti-trust scrutiny, the new entity will be a formidable player in the world drug and agriculture market.

The Wall Street Journal said Monsanto is in talks about selling all or part of the company, and Swiss Novartis has emerged as a buyer. While Monsanto, maker of the herbicide Roundup and genetically modified seeds, has been eager to revive its flagging stock price, Novartis wants to consolidate its drug range and is specially attracted by Monsanto's Searle divisiion, which has the top-selling arthritis drug Celebrex.
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GE Cap, 2 Japanese cos set up M&A fund
Tokyo: General Electric Company unit GE Capital, Sumitomo Corporation and Daiwa Securities SP Capital Markets are setting up a $2.86 billion fund to finance corporate mergers and acquisitions in Japan. The fund will have money from other investors and borrowings are planned to be collateralised by assets of businesses to be purchased.
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BASF, Bayer, Hoechst to merge textile units
Frankfurt: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst are combining their textile activities into one firm. The three German companies will hold equal stakes in the proposed venture. BASF will fold its textile chemical business together with DyStar, a 50:50 joint venture between Bayer and Hoechst, into a separate company.

The new company will be the world’s largest maker of textile dyes ahead of Ciba Speciality and Clariant.
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H-P reveals e-speak source code
Palo Alto: Hewlett-Packard Company has announced that it will make the source code behind its new software product, e-speak, available over the Internet. This will mean that any developer will be able to use e-speak to create his or her own Internet products and services.

The new software enables services from different websites to be integrated and built to cater to customer needs rather than respond to instructions. The company hopes that e-speak will be a significant webtool, maybe as important as the HTML programming language.
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Record webprice for BMW sports utility
Detroit: The new BMW sports utility, BMW X5, fetched a price of $159,100 after an online bidding on the Internet. BMW said the price was almost $102,000 more than what the vehicle would have got at a dealer’s place. Brad and Dawn Fire from Olathe, Kansas, had their bid officially verified following a 10-day auction on the Internet site eBay. The X5 is not likely to be displayed at dealers’ showrooms until December 1999.
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Nortel takes on Cisco
Toronto: Nortel Networks, one of the world’s largest communications equipment makers, is slashing prices and allowing open access to its Internet networking technology in a bid to combat rival Cisco Systems. Nortel said it is allying with Intel, the largest chipmaker in the world, to add parts of its new open Internet platform to Intel’s web products.

The networking equipment router has normally worked only on one system and with related products.
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