BORL in a written communication to the petroleum ministry has said Reliance’s pipeline could conflict with the progress of the Bina refinery project and might create "unwarranted problems" for it and has asked the petroleum ministry to specify certain conditions for Reliance before the government appoints competent authorities to process clearances for the proposed gas pipelines.
A Reliance spokesman said that Reliance had submitted the pipeline project right of user (ROU) request in line with the government regulations. The company was awaiting the government’s response to its proposal.
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JBIC threatens that it may invoke guarantees on Dabhol loan
Mumbai—The Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) last week warned Indian lenders to Dabhol Power Company of a possible invoking of guarantee extended by the domestic banks on the overseas loan.
Sources said that this was since the Dabhol crisis came up that a foreign institution formally broached the tricky issue of invoking guarantees.
This comes as Bechtel and other construction contractors terminate the project work on the phase II of DPC.
While export credit agencies like JBIC have so far pulling out, they can invoke the loan guarantees provided by the Indian banks if the construction contracts are cancelled.
IDBI, ICICI, SBI and IFCI have extended a total guarantee of $524.24 million against loans from different foreign export credit agencies and banks.
JBIC has a direct fund exposure of $258.21 million, the commercial risk of which is fully covered by Indian institutions. Significantly, among other things, the commercial risk cover includes a possible termination of construction contracts.
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Sabeer Bhatia’s Navinmail silenced
New Delhi—After Sabeer Bhatia’s Arzoo fizzled out, another of his ventures ‘Navinmail’ is facing a rough time. But this is only in India where the all-important bureaucrats still rule the roost.
Navin Communications, funded by Cirrus Logic founder Suhas Patil, and had major investors like Bhatia, Rajat Gupta, of McKinsey, Kanwal Rekhi founder of TiE and Purnendu Chatterjee of The Chatterjee Group, was forced to put a stop to its TeleVoice voice message services in India last week.
The reason being Navin Communications does not have the license to offer in India what it has been offering in the US market for the past two years—‘store and forward’ voice mail service over the internet at a nominal rate of Rs 10 per message. TeliVoice service was being offered in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bombay, Delhi, Pune, Nasik, and Baroda and had attracted good response from subscribers though no numbers are readily available. The users of the service can record, send, receive, and listen to TeliVoice messages worldwide via a personal computer with a microphone and speakers.
Recipients of the messages can listen and reply to them over the telephone from anywhere.
From India, NavinMail was offering the service only to the US, unlike in other countries.
NavinMail in a note to its subscribers said: "Due to circumstances entirely beyond our control, our TeliVoice service has been disrupted in India. The circumstances are entirely beyond our control. We are faced with some regulatory technicalities related to Internet based services in India. We are working extremely hard to resolve the issues and get our service restored as soon as possible.’’
The company says it did not take a license since it says it never required to take one. It’s service do not fall under voice telephony, which is banned by the department of telecommunications.
Suhas Patil is chairman while Bhatia is co-chairman of Navin Communications and operates services in India through its wholly-owned subsidiary NavinMail Services India in Mumbai in which it has invested nearly Rs 2 crore.
The service is also offered in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the UK and the Philippines. In US alone, NavinMail has 200,000 registered users, which drives its revenues, Patil said.
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Wipro shares pledged to ICICI
Bangalore-- According to Wipro’s annual report for financial 2001, the majority stake holder, and chairman of Wipro, Azim Premji has pledged 2.06 million equity shares of Wipro in favour of ICICI in the option agreement involving Wipro Net.
Earlier Wipro had entered into a share purchase agreement with ICICI under which the former sold 1.79 million shares in the subsidiary Wipro Net, which represented 8 per cent of Wipro Net’s equity base. The purchase price was fixed at Rs 555 per equity share ($11.85 per share).
Simultaneously, Wipro also entered into an "Option Agreement" with ICICI under which the latter was granted a "put option" to sell the said shares back to Wipro at a share price which would yield ICICI a return of 13.75 per cent per annum, compounded quarterly.
This was computed on the price of $11.85 per share. The put option would be exercised between 13 and 18 months from the date of the share purchase agreement, the report adds.
The option agreement also provides a "call option" to ICICI under which the latter is required to sell the Wipro Net shares back to Wipro.
The call option would also be exercisable in 13-18 months from the date of the share purchase agreement.
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South African Breweries to acquire Mysore Breweries
Mumbai--South African Breweries India has acquired a 75.77 per cent stake in Bangalore-based Mysore Breweries for around $20 million. Mysore Breweries is the maker of Knockout brand of beer.
K P Balasubramaniam, vice-chairman and managing director of Mysore Breweries, who will continue to hold the same post said that though it had been approached by other foreign players, South African Breweries was chosen as it was one of the biggest players in the world.
Sources say that the clinching argument in South African Breweries' favour was that it would continue to market the Knockout brand.
South African Breweries' famous premium beer brand is Castle.
Consequent to the acquisition, South African Breweries would also gain an indirect control over Pals Distilleries, a subsidiary of Mysore Breweries that has a brewery division in Aurangabad and a distillery division at Bangalore.
The other major brands of Mysore Breweries are Bengal Premium, Pals Premium and Seven Stars.
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Videocon setting up wholly owned subsidiary in China
New Delhi--Consumer electronics major Videocon is setting up a wholly owned subsidiary in China for manufacturing colour televisions and Internet TVs. The subsidiary christened Paramount Global Ltd will be based in China's Shanghai special industrial area, said company executives.

Videocon group chairman and managing director Venugopal N Dhoot said the company has received necessary clearances from government bodies and the plant would be operational by March 2002. He added that the plant will have a capacity to manufacture 1.5 lakh units of Internet-televisions per annum. The initial proposed investment was $4 million, which would be increased as the business grew.
The company has already acquired land in the proposed location of the greenfield manufacturing facility.
Wholly owned subsidiaries are permitted in these special economic zones subject to 50 per cent export obligation.
The company had earlier proposed to sell Internet televisions made in India in the Chinese market but changed its plans after it saw a huge cost advantage in manufacturing its televisions in China. The Chinese market can be exploited with cheap products.
As per the agreement with the Chinese government, Videocon will have to sell 50 per cent of its goods in China and the remaining has to be exported.
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SBI may route part of forex business to Kolkata Kolkata--State Bank of India (SBI) might shift its spot forex business back to Kolkata.
The SBI management says this is because the Kolkata office conducts around 48 per cent of the bank's forex business. The unions at Kolkata say that the office is underutilised as the actual share of forex trade was only around 35 per cent and transfer of spot exchange business, at present located at Mumbai, to Kolkata, is expected to correct this situation. The unions and management has been at loggerhead since half the forex business was transferred to Mumbai.

A team of experts from State Bank of India's Mumbai office will soon visit its Kolkata circle to take a fresh look at the volume of foreign exchange business conducted by the circle and the viability of shifting some additional business here.

Incidentally, the total forex business handled by SBI has been suffering since it was divided in 1998. From a declared profit of Rs 463 crore in 1997-98, which declined to Ts 363 crore in 1998-99 and further to Rs 300 crore in 1999-2000.
SBI had initially, on the advice of McKinsey & Co, envisaged shifting the total forex operation to Mumbai.
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BPL Mobile will bid for five cellular circles
Mumbai—BPL Mobile, the cellular service provider in the Mumbai metro circle, will participate in the bidding for five cellular circles--- Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. However, BPL Cellular, the other mobile service provider from the group, is not participating in the fourth cellular bids.
Significantly, the BPL group is gearing up for a mega merger with another cellular player. The decision to go ahead with the bids for five leading circles is for avoiding any eventuality in the wake of an unexpected collapse of talks for a merger with another cellular player, a top BPL official said.
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Indian Syntans syndicate picks up 5 percent stake in Bayer India
Mumbai--Bayer India, the Indian subsidiary of the German chemicals major Bayer AG, in a notice to the BSE has said that Indian Syntans and persons acting in concert had acquired more than five per cent stake in Bayer India as on June 25.
As per Sebi guidelines, if any party acquires a five per cent stake in a company it has to inform them. The company in which the shares have been taken in turn will inform the stock exchanges.
The domestic financial institutions have a 26.44 per cent interest in the company. The balance equity is with Indian shareholders, including the public.
At the stock markets, Bayer India's scrip slid 6.2 per cent at close today. The company's share price closed at Rs 614.35, down from Rs 655.45 at close on Monday.
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Merck shuts down imaging products business
Mumbai-- E-Merck, the pharma company has decided to close down its imaging products business by the end of this month.
S N Talwar, chairman of E-Merck said this at the company’s annual general meeting today.
The imaging products business was in collaboration with the Italian company Bracco Spa.
In the first five months of 2001, E-Merck registered a turnover of Rs 129.44 crore, 8 per cent up from the corresponding period last year, Talwar added.
E-Merck plans to enter the oral anti-diabetic segment this year and already has a basket of eight products in the pipeline and at the same time it is also looking at strengthening its therapeutic segment either by acquisition of brands or collaborations.
It recently acquired the trademark for Glaxo's product Livogen for Rs 9 crore. The company launched several products in the cardio-vascular, dermatology and anti-infectives segments last year.
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Star to revise tariff card
Mumbai-- Star India Ltd will launch an all-new Star TV tariff card, effective from July 1.
According to the new card Star will give special rates to advertisers who buy all the channels in the Star bouquet. This offer will be valid for a period of six months, after which it will be reviewed.
The company calls it ‘customised package deals,’ and is offering an entire kitty of the seven Star channels, viz, Star Plus, Star World, Star Movies, Star News, Star Gold, Channel [V] and National Geographic, to advertisers as an incentive for the clients to buy more.
Zee TV had launched a similar network rate card in April this year, offering a package deal of all the Zee channels, to the advertisers.
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Intel targets public sector banks to drive future growth
Mumbai--Intel, alongwith partners TCS, Infosys, I-flex, Compaq and IBM, is looking at computerization of public sector banks to drive its growth in the country.
Intel is seeking a revenue growth of around 50 to 60 per cent for 2001 in India of which a large portion will come from the banking and finance sector as the company feels that compared to other industries, the banking and finance sector is growing at a faster pace. Intel's presence in the country is chiefly in the areas of banking and finance, manufacturing, telecom and e-governance.
Within the banking sector, Intel's focus is on the public sector and new generation private sector banks, targeting its 64 bit Itanium servers and 32 bit Xeon Servers. Intel is also looking at co-operative banks and within the banking sector, Intel is eyeing core banking, data warehousing and enterprise integration application (EIA).
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Soon a Sony call centre
Bangalore— Kunitake Ando, president and COO, Sony Corporation says that the company is considering the possibility of setting up a call centre in India in order to leverage on the English-speaking talent that India offers.

He said that Sony is transforming itself from a hardware company to a software oriented one and India had the potential to grab a large share of software development business from Sony. But Sony he said was not familiar with the way that India operated.
Sony for now will not consider acquiring any software companies in India. It will, however, step up on alliance and collaboration with Indian companies.
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Oracle treads on Microsoft territory with online small business service
Redwood Shores—Oracle, the second-largest software company behind Microsoft, has unveiled an online service that will lease its software to small businesses in a move designed to bolster its Internet business and challenge archrival Microsoft.
It will charge $99 per month for online access to a suite of business software applications that will handle a variety of accounting, marketing and administrative chores.
The service is aimed at companies with fewer than 100 employees -- a market that has been largely ignored by Oracle because of the difficulty of making money selling its software to such small accounts.
With this expansion, Oracle will be trespassing on territory already staked out by Microsoft, which is trying to sell a similar online package through a site called bCentral.Com.
BCentral.Com has about 100,000 subscribers that pay an average subscription of $30 per month.
Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison on Tuesday described his latest foray as a "direct assault" on Microsoft and predicted his service would quickly establish itself as the industry leader. He decried BCentral as being so bad that its biggest fear was that people would think online services won't work.
Oracle's software applications have received mixed reviews from analysts, who say many big business customers are having trouble making the package work properly. Ellison insists Oracle's e-business applications are running smoothly at major corporations such as Ford Motor, General Electric and Alcoa.
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Oracle India expands operations
New Delhi—Oracles India development centre is on an expansion spree. Soon after adding on a fifth division to cover its US development centre’s entire portfolio of development, the company is now tripling its staff strength in India support centre.
The company’s expansion plans for the year are pegged at $50 million.
The latest division that the company has added is customer relationship management and now the company plans to hire lot of people for other divisions as well says Ranjan Chak, head, Oracle’s India development centre.
The company already works on four groups — database, tools, education and platform technology division.
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VSNL to stay out of 4th cell slot bidding
New Delhi-- Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) has been barred from participating in the ongoing bidding process for entering into cellular services in the country. This is on the grounds as two other State-owned organisations namely Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam were already offering these services.

VSNL was among the 24 companies which had evinced interest in the bidding process of fourth cellular slot as they had bought the tender form for which the last date was June 22. Interested parties are supposed to submit their bids by June 29.
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TV Today, SET India may create joint platform
New Delhi--TV Today Network has said that it is in negotiations with Sony Entertainment Television to set up a common distribution platform that will create a third bouquet of channels other than the ones available from Zee and Star. To be included in the proposed platform are channels like MTV and Discovery as well.
Said a channel source the proposed bouquet, would include news from Aaj Tak, Music from MTV, entertainment from Sony and Sony Max, business news from CNBC and nature/wildlife from Discovery.
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Daewoo to launch Matiz variant
New Delhi—Daewoo Motors India plans to launch a limited edition version of its premium small car Matiz early next month.
The new variant will feature some exterior changes like a new front grill and chrome headlights and would be priced at over Rs 3.79 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), a premium of about Rs 2,500 than the present top-end version of the car, said Daewoo India officials.
During the fiscal ended March 31, 2001, Daewoo India recorded a rise of 6.8 per cent in sales at 42,960 cars.
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Goodlass Nerolac FY '01 net down 25%
Mumbai—Goodlass Nerolac Paints has reported a 24.68 per cent dip in net profit at Rs 22.58 crore for the financial year ended March 31, 2001, compared to Rs 29.98 crore in the previous fiscal year.
The board has recommended a dividend of 65 per cent for 2001, the same as in 1999-2000, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange here on Wednesday.
The company said recession in the automobile industry had affected industrial sales. However, decorative sales posted an impressive growth. Margins during the year have been squeezed by higher inflation of eight per cent as well as by price reduction to industrial customers.
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Exiting foreign banks boon for HDFC Bank
Mumbai--HDFC Bank is eyeing portfolios, assets and branches of banks that are exiting from India or divesting from certain operations.
A HDFC Bank official said this was part of its strategy to grow externally.
This thinking comes at a time when a number of small foreign banks are all set to shut shop in India.
HDFC Bank is also going in for a $175 million issue of American Depositary Shares (ADS), proceeds from which are to be used for funding the bank’s targeted growth rate of 25-30 per cent. The issue will also help build up a war chest to fund acquisitions.
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