Directors exit age in Infosys Technologies fixed
Calcutta: As part of its corporate governance policy, Infosys Technologies Ltd. has fixed the retirement age of outside directors on its board at 65 and the inside directors at 60. According to a company announcement, even Mr. Narayana Murthy, the founder-chairman of the company and a great believer in the "spirit and power of youth", will retire at 60.

The move by the country leading infotech company is expected to renew the on-going controversy among industry captains who are clearly polarised on the retirement issue, clearly dividing the family-run and professionally managed companies into two groups. While the family-run corporates do not believe in retirement age, the professionals-turned-industrialist do.

The Infosys board recently appointed three young executives of the company on the board as additional directors. They will hold office to the next annual general meeting when their re-appointment as whole-time directors will be placed before the shareholders.
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Three new models from Kinetic stable
New Delhi: Two-wheeler manufacturer, Kinetic Motor Company, has readied three new scooter models for launch and is also said to be working on a motorcycle model for the rural market.

According to Ms. Sulajja Firodia-Motwani, joint managing director, the company is to soon introduce a 60 cc scooterette, a 110 cc scooter and a family scooter in the domestic market.

The company is also said to be working on a rural motorcycle model, which would be fitted with a powerful two-stroke engine of capacity in the range of 100-150 cc. It is expected that this motorcycle would cost about Rs 40,000 on road.

For the non-rural markets, the company is planning to launch its GF-series motorcycles in October this year, developed in collaboration with the Korean auto major Hyousung Motors. It will introduce two variants of the model which would be fitted with 125 cc and 150 cc four-valve engines.

It is also working on advanced engines for two-wheelers which could meet the emission norms coming into effect in 2003.
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Philips India appoints Booz & Allen and PwC for turnaround prescription
New Delhi: Philips India, the Indian subsidiary of the DUTCH electronics major, recently appointed management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz & Allen, for a major restructuring of its consumer electronics operations in order to turn this division profitable and help it show sustained growth.

The division has been traditionally plagued with negative growth or very marginal profits for the past five years. According to Mr. Rajeev Karwal, senior vice president of the division, the appointment of the consultants was to change this trend and make the division a cash cow.

As part of this exercise, the division will expand its current four regional office and three branches to form 18 new branch offices by the year-end. These branch offices will manage direct sales across the country. The exercise will also see people movement from back office to the front-end operations and from headquarters to the branch office.
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IBM unveils new server range
New Delhi: Computer giant, IBM, announced the launch of its new line of AS/400e servers priced at Rs. 6 lakh onwards. These servers are aimed at complex core business-to-business applications and solutions like Java, Domino and Business Intelligence, and are designed to handle contemporary workloads that e-business applications require.

The range is supported by microchips made of silicon-on-insulator transistors and copper wiring aimed at increasing performance upto 20 to 30 per cent beyond the use of copper by protecting transistors on a chip with a blanket of insulation, reducing harmful electrical leakage that wastes power.
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New product portfolio to push Tata Telecom ahead in new economy
Mumbai: As part of its move to strengthen its position in the new economy, Tata Telecom, the joint venture between the Tata group and Lucent Technologies, has decided to change focus and introduce a range of new generation products and services.

The company has also entered into a partnership with Polycom, a multinational business communication solution major, to enhance the company's desktop product portfolio in video business and to provide complete end-to-end video solutions.

As part of an effort to provide cutting edge technologies related to the Internet, the companyt will also provide voice and voice over Internet Protocol (IP) solutions, including solutions based on IP Trunking, multi-point conferencing unit (MCU), gateways, gatekeepers and H.323-based video end point.

In the small and medium enterprise category, the company has plans to introduce enhanced dealer portfolio offerings such as state-of-the-art KTS and audio conferencing solutions, besides unified messaging solutions that are capable with most popular e-mail systems and networking.

The company has already launched a range of new products to provide end-to-end call centre solutions. This includes Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Internet call centre solution and a variety of productivity enhancement tools such as predictive dialers, voice loggers among others.
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New Alto from Maruti to be launched sooner
Pune: Despite its earlier announcement that the launch of the new Alto model would be delayed, automobile major Maruti Udyog Ltd. is said to be preparing for the launch in the next 10 days.

According to a report appearing in the Business Line, the company has already assembled 1,100 units of the car. Company sources, however, did not confirm the same.

The report states that the launch has been advanced due to the downturn in sales of MUL and the general slowdown in the market after a brief respite last month.

The Indian version of the New Alto, unveiled in Europe in October 1998, will sport a new name, a more "rounded shape" and a 1000cc, 16 valve , aluminium engine. The car is expected to crate a new niche between the company’s basic, 800 model, and the Zen and is expected to tackle the problem of model fatigue that faces the company's existing models.
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ACC plans to set up facility in Bellary
Bangalore: Cement major, ACC Ltd., is likely to set up a 1-million tonne per annum cement plant in the Vijaynagar Steel Ltd (JVSL) complex at Bellary. The cement plant will be sourcing the huge quantity of slag from the steel plant.

With the potential for increase in infrastructure and construction activity in the State, especially given the State Government's initiatives to attract investment, the demand for cement is projected to go up and ACC's facility could cater to this demand.
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Despite lukewarm response, Reliance picks 11 per cent more in BSES via open offer
Mumbai: Despite an unattractive offer price and the financial institutions refusing to the subscribe for the offer, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has managed to increase its stake in BSES by 11 per cent through its open offer which closed on July 16. As a result of this, RIL's stake in BSES will go up to 25.82 per cent from the current 14.82 per cent.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) apparently played a major role in helping RIL. The revised price was nearly 10 per cent more than the original offer price and four per cent to the closing price of BSES share on June 30.

RIL had, on June 30, announced an upward revision in the open offer price for BSES to Rs 255 per share from its earlier offer of Rs 234.60 per share. RIL said that the revised price represented the closing price of the BSES share on the date the public announcement of the open offer was made by the company.
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