LearningByte to open new centre in India
Mumbai: LearningByte International, the US-based information technology training company acquired by the Aditya Birla group, will expand its business in Europe, Asia and the Middle East through acquisitions and alliances. Rajiv Tandon, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said another development centre is being planned in India, in addition to the ones at Pilani, bangalore, and Hyderabad.

The Minneapolis-based LearningByte International has eight centres in the US and India. A significant portion of the company’s development work is based in India, where it has 70 out of its 140 employees.
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B.K. Modi forms new holding company
New Delhi: Modi Holding has become the new holding company of the B.K. Modi group. The group has transferred its holdings in Modi Rubber and Modi International Paper from the existing holding company, ModiCorp, to Modi Holding. ModiCorp is now expected to focus on information technology, telecom and Internet-related businesses.

ModiCorp came into existence in 1996 as a holding company to consolidate all B.K. Modi group companies under one umbrella.
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Telco to hike price of commercial vehicles
Mumbai: The Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company is planning to increase the prices of its commercial vehicles by three to five per cent in January 2000. The reason, the company says, is a rise in input costs.

Ashok Leyland, the other major manufacturer of commercial vehicles in the country, announced a three to four per cent increase in the prices of its vehicles a few days ago.  
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Novopan, Oberoi end Krishna Oberoi pact
Hyderabad: Novopan Industries, owner of the Krishna Oberoi, Hyderabad, and the Oberoi group's EIH Ltd have decided to terminate the technical services agreement between them. EIH has been operating the hotel under an agreement since November 1987. Novopan will assume responsibility for running the hotel from 1 April 2000.

With that the hotel will stop using the Oberoi brand name.  
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Jindal Strips to set up US subsidiary
New Delhi: Jindal Strips is setting up an offshore subsidiary, Massillon Stainless, which will operate the recently-acquired Massillon stainless steel plant in Ohio in the US. Jindal Strips  has bought the plant from Bethlehem Steel Corporation for Rs 350 crore.

Jindal Strips will have a 51 per cent holding in the subsidiary, while 49 per cent will be held by strategic investors in the US. The company will retain the 125 existing employees. The state of Ohio has offered grants, tax reliefs and low interest rates to the company. The plant has a capacity to make 60,000 tonnes of cold rolled products per annum.
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Govt assurance on Cogentrix
New Delhi: The Union government has asserted that it is keen to go ahead with the Mangalore Power Project. It has given an assurance in the Lok Sabha that the cabinet will consider a counter-guarantee for the fast track Rs 4,000-crore, 1,013-megawatt project within a week. However, the revival will be  based on a recommendation from the state government, power minister P.R. Kumaramangalam said. The state government must first prepare the power purchase agreement.

The foreign promoters of the project, Cogentrix of the US and China Light & Power of Hong Kong, had threatened to withdraw from the project due to inordinate procedural delays and litigation.  
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Reliance-WorldTel plans Net backbone in Delhi
New Delhi: Telecom infrastructure joint venture Reliance-WorldTel is setting up an optical fibre backbone for Internet services in Delhi. The company will sign an agreement with the Delhi state government for this purpose. The agreement will cover setting up a network and providing Internet services.

Reliance-WorldTel has already signed agreements with the governments of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal for creating an Internet infrastructure, including optical fibre-based networks.  
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RPG Cables buys unit in Silvassa
Mumbai: RPG Cables has bought a unit at Silvassa to make power cables. The company has invested Rs 10 crore in the facility. The company has decided to lease its jelly-filled cables factory at Rae Bareli to Concept, a subsidiary. It is also expanding the optic fibre capacity of its Mysore plant.
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Eicher collaborates with Finland company
New Delhi: Eicher Tractors has entered into a technical collaboration with Finland’s Sisu Tractors for manufacturing 61-horse power-plus tractors in India. The new tractors will be in the market in March 2000.

Currently Eicher makes 24-, 30-, 35- and 40-horse power tractors at its Faridabad plant. The company also has a plant in Bhopal with a capacity of 15,000 tractors a year.  
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Nelito to explore overseas markets
Calcutta: Nelito Systems, a joint venture between Tata group company Nelco and Itochu Corporation of Japan, will enter markets in China, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East with its bank automation solutions. The company will initially offer its IBAS 2000 Plus product, which has been launched in India. The product, developed indigenously, is capable of creating new banking products online without changing the underlying source code. It is powered by Microsoft technology.

The company also plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in the US to market its products and also to bag projects in Internet-based banking.
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Rockwell, TCS in tie-up
Long Beach, California: US electronics and communications major Rockwell International’s flagship company Rockwell Automation is teaming up with Tata Consultancy Services. Under the joint initiative, TCS will be responsible for maintenance of Rockwell Automation’s legacy business systems infrastructure in India. The operations will be supervised by Rockwell Automation’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.
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Moody’s to be a separate entity
New York: Business information vendor Dun & Bradstreet is planning to spin off its highly profitable Moody’s Investor Service. The company says it will boost value for holders of its shares. It is likely to allocate shares in a new publicly traded Moody’s company to existing shareholders of Dun & Bradstreet. The company has hired Goldman Sachs to analyse and develop a structure for the transaction.

The spin-off will the fourth by the company. It has already hived off Yellow Pages directory publisher Reuben H. Donnelley, market research firm A C Nielsen and high tech and media research firm Cognizant, which it later split into IMS Health and Nielsen Media Research. 
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Exxon Mobil to cut 16,000 jobs
New York: Exxon Mobil has announced plans to cut 16,000 jobs to help save $3.8 billion in the third year of operations of the merged entity. The company’s chairman, Lee Raymond says the company will surpass its original pre-tax savings target of $2.8 billion annually by $1 billion by the third year of the merger. He also said the deal will raise its net income by about $1 billion in 2000, and by about $2.5 billion in 2003. 
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LVMH to buy equity in Oprah’s net venture
New York: LVMH of Paris, the world’s largest luxury goods manufacturer, is investing $122 million in media celebrity Oprah Winfrey’s venture, Oxygen Media. LVMH is taking a minority stake in the women’s cable and Internet venture with a seat on its board. The holding will be picked up by LVMH’s Internet investment company Europweb.
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IBM to install largest data warehouse
New York: International Business Machines has bagged a contract from Deutsche Telekom for supplying the largest ever data system warehouse. The system is capable of storing 100 terabytes of information. The first phase of the project will begin in the third quarter of 2000 at DeTeCSM, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary providing infotech services.

IBM leads in operating large data warehouses in the world with some 170 installations that are larger than one terabyte of data size.
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General Motors offers $6.2 billion for Daewoo
Detroit: General Motors is understood to have offered $5.3 to 6.2 billion for Daewoo Motor Company. The offer comes with a condition – that the ailing South Korean group’s creditors should write off the company’s debt, which runs into billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, DaimlerChrysler and Ford Motor Company have confirmed that they are interested in Daewoo Motors, making the scenario rather complex for General Motors.
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Boeing's new bookings narrows gap with Airbus
Everett, Washington: Boeing Company has received orders worth $12.1 billion for commercial jets. The company says it has 163 orders worth $9.5 billion, which it had not disclosed earlier, and a new order from General Electric’s leasing company GE Capital Aviation Services for 20 wide body jets valued at around $2.6 billion.

In all, the company has 368 orders, still below the 417 orders Airbus says it has booked.    
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