The Hindu to roll out with new look from Thursday
Chennai: The Hindu is all set to sport a new look from Thursday, with a design "more contemporary, elegant" in the words of the paper's Editor-in-Chief, N. Ram.

Ram said the redesign was piloted by Dr Mario Garcia and his team from Garcia Media, which has designed more than 450 newspapers round the world.

The redesigned newspaper offered readers more legible typography, an efficient indexing or "navigation" system, a clear hierarchy of stories, a new and sophisticated colour palette and provided advertisers better value and new opportunities.
Ram pointed out that 126-year-old The Hindu had continually sought to be classic, yet contemporary, contemporary, yet classic.

According to Dr Garcia, The Hindu's new design is all about purity and functionalism of design at work: the typography is based on two main fonts, Interstate and Chronicle, which render an elegance and clarity to the product. The colour palette mixes soft pastel colours to go with the content of a newspaper for which credibility, sobriety and intelligent reporting are the key. Overall, pure design implies no decorations, no artificial motifs, everything that is utilised has a purpose.
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US panel approves VSNL-Tyco deal
Washington: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has told Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd that it will not launch a full-scale investigation of the company's plans to buy the undersea cables from Tyco International Ltd. thereby giving its approval to the $130 million sale of a network of undersea communications cables to India's largest phone and broadband company.

The panel told Videsh Sanchar in a letter on Monday there were "no issues of national security to warrant an investigation." The Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security Department and Defence Department signed a 32-page agreement with the company.

The agreement guarantees that the US government can continue to install court-authorized wiretaps on the network and conduct background checks on Videsh Sanchar employees in the United States. Such agreements are common.

The agreement also requires that Videsh Sanchar takes steps to prevent illegal eavesdropping on US customers and to guarantee that foreign governments can't access classified or sensitive US government information carried over the undersea network.
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Petronet to source more LNG from Qatar
New Delhi: Petronet LNG Ltd (PLL) has said that it would push for additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from Qatar.

Qatar currently supplies 5 million tonnes of gas per annum to PLL's Dahej terminal. The West Asian country will begin supplies of an additional 2.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG to PLL's upcoming Kochi terminal from June 2008.

PLL has a 25-year contract with Qatar for the supply of LNG. India started importing Qatari gas last year, although the deal had been clinched with state-owned, Rasgas, in 1999. The country is receiving natural gas from Qatar roughly every fourth day at a price, which is cheaper than the country's own production sources.

LNG from Qatar after regasification costs $3.37 million British thermal unit (mbtu), which is about 17 per cent cheaper than gas being sold by the consortium operating in the Panna, Mukta and Tapti fields.

PLL plans to expand capacity at Dahej to 10 million tonnes from the present 5 million tonnes and the Kochi terminal from 2.5 million tonnes currently to 5 million tonnes in the future.
During the state visit of the Emir of Qatar, India would be seeking additional quantities of LNG to meet future requirements.
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IOC and Petropars submit joint proposal for Iranian gas field
New Delhi: The Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOC) and Petropars, Iran, have submitted a joint proposal to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for developing an upstream block in South Pars gas field and also for setting up of LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction facilities, with 9 million metric tonnes (MMT) per annum capacity, in Iran.

In November last year IOC had inked a MoU with Petropars for the purpose as well as having marketing rights for IOC for 9 MMT of LNG. The MoU was executed in pursuance of the discussions held between the Oil Minister of India and Iran at Vienna on September 16, 2004. The two had agreed to submit a joint proposal to NIOC by the end of February 2005.

As per the agreement, IOC is expected to have 40 per cent stake in the exploration block, with Petropars holding the rest. For the second project, the LNG facility, IOC plans to have 60 per cent stake and the rest remaining with Petropars.
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Rs250 crore order for Siemens from Neyveli Lignite
Mumbai: Siemens Ltd has bagged electrical and automation contracts worth Rs250 crore for the Neyveli Lignite Corporation's mine expansion project.

The scope of the orders includes design, manufacture, supply, erection and commissioning of special mining equipment and shiftable conveyers. The company will be supplying the latest Simovert Master, a digital variable speed drive, for all the machines and the conveyor.

The commissioning of these equipment and conveyors are expected to be completed in 28-34 months.
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Rs1,737 crore order for IVRCL from AP govt.
Hyderabad: IVRCL Infrastructures & Projects Ltd (IVRCL), the Hyderabad-based infrastructure major, has announced that it has bagged an Rs1,737-crore contract from the Andhra Pradesh Government for execution of its Sripada Sagar Projects (stage-II, phase-I).

In a press release here, the company said the contract includes investigation, soil exploration, design, supply installation, testing and commissioning of pumping machinery, transformers, substations, raising mains including construction of pump house and all civil structures, and to develop 2-lakh acres of ayacut duly considering the needs of drinking water for villages.

IVRCL has said that the contract would be executed through the company's joint venture IVRCL-Navayuga & SEW, wherein the company has 35.75 per cent holding.

The project would be completed within a period of 30 months.
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IOC to invest Rs5,800 crore in current fiscal
New Delhi: Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOC) proposes to invest over Rs5,800 crore in new projects during the current fiscal. The company has said that it would invest Rs1,530.14 crore in a refinery, Rs2,022.99 crore in petro-chemical projects and Rs953.78 crore in pipelines.

It also plans to set up 2,000 petrol pumps in 2005-06. IOC would set up 1,000 new petrol stations and an equal number of smaller pumps in 2005-06.

The company has sought a Rs5.18 per litre hike in the price of diesel and Rs4.59 per litre increase in petrol prices. Officials said that the company had lost Rs300 crore on selling petrol and diesel below cost in the first fortnight of April.

In addition, the oil major also lost Rs350 crore during the same period on selling LPG and kerosene below the cost. IOC had lost Rs4,175 crore on kerosene and Rs3,157 crore on LPG in 2004-05.

On the import front IOC plans to import around 32 million tonnes of crude in the current financial year. The IOC Chairman said that term crude imports during the year ending March 2006 are estimated at 24.8 million tonnes.

Imports from Saudi Arabia will be to the order of 4.5 million tonnes, Kuwait 6.5 million tonnes, Iraq 8.4 million tonnes, UAE 1.94 million tonnes, Nigeria 2 million tonnes, Malaysia 1 million tonnes and Iran half a million tonnes. LPG imports will be 2.158 million tonnes during the current year and almost half of the quantity is from Saudi Arabia.
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Sabeer Bhatia launches InstaColl
Bangalore: Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has launched InstaColl, an Indian independent software vendor (ISV) with an instant messaging solution of the same name. The company has released a beta version of the product and is also running pilot tests at a few corporates and plans to take the product to world markets in the next month or so.

"InstaColl lets a group of people share information, graphics, spreadsheets, word documents, Powerpoint presentations and video clips in real-time, and lets all of them work on the activity at the same time," said Bhatia, who is joining the board of InstaColl as Chairman apart from having invested an undisclosed sum in the company. The Founder and CEO, Sumanth Raghavendra, said the company has partnered with IBM to offer the product with its X-series servers.

InstaColl is an online collaboration solution that is designed to expedite the task of sharing documents and information across multiple users and locations.

The solution is available to be run on MS Office applications and can be made available on others. It uses a hybrid P2P and client server architecture and can support a large number of users. It can also be extended to non-users, reducing the barriers to its utilisation, said Bhatia. "We are even ahead of Microsoft on this," he said in response to a question on InstaColl's likeness to MS applications on collaborative meetings.

"InstaColl has been built so that there is immediate sharing, editing and collaborative efforts possible on the task" Bhatia said.
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Quarterly Results: Essar Steel, HDFC Bank
Essar Steel FY05 net zooms to Rs590.1 crore
Mumbai: Essar Steel reported a massive jump in net profit to Rs 590.15 crore for the year ending March 31, 2005 as compared to Rs59.99 crore for the corresponding period of previous fiscal. Total income for the period under review grew by 65 per cent to Rs6,121.27 crore as compared to Rs3,717.65 crore last fiscal.

For the quarter ending March 31, 2005 the net profit rose to Rs272.78 crore as against Rs98.02 crore in the same quarter of previous fiscal. The total income stood at Rs1,926.64 crore as compared to Rs1,227.11 crore in the corresponding period of previous fiscal.

HDFC Bank net profit up 30.6 per cent
New Delhi: HDFC Bank has reported a 30 per cent increase in its net profit for the year ended March 31, 2005 at Rs665.56 crore as against Rs509.50 crores for the year ended March 31, 2004, spurred by a robust credit growth.

The board has recommended a 45 per cent dividend of Rs4.50 per equity shares of Rs10 each, the bank has said in a release.
With an increase in its net interest income, the bank's total income for the reporting fiscal rose by 23 per cent to Rs3,744.83 crores as against Rs3,028.96 crores in FY-04. The net interest income for the year ended March 31, 2005 was pegged at Rs3,093.49 crore as against Rs2,548.93 crore for the previous year.

Net profit for the last quarter ending March 31 rose by 30 per cent to Rs202.37 crore as against Rs154.72 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2004 while its total income increased from Rs806.31 crores in Q4-04 to Rs1,087.27 crores for the reporting quarter.

The bank's total deposits for the reporting fiscal increased by 19.6 per cent to Rs36,354 crore as against Rs30,409 crore for the last fiscal while its savings account deposits increased by 46.3 per cent from Rs7,804 crores to Rs11,418 crores as of March 31, 2005.
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