Aban Offshore decides to make open offer for Sinvest
Chennai: Aban Offshore has decided to make the mandatory open offer for Sinvest, Norway, the company in which it through its subsidiary in Singapore, Aban Singapore Pte Ltd, acquired a 40 per cent stake. Sinvest is engaged in providing drilling services to oil companies.

Apart from Aban Offshore ICICI Bank UK and First Securities together bought 8.4 per cent.

The Norwegian authorities decided that Aban had to make a mandatory open offer to the other shareholders of Sinvest, or retain only 40 per cent stake in the company.

Aban Singapore Pte will raise $150 million through an issue of convertible notes — convertible into 10.37 per cent of the company's equity. UTI Bank has agreed to provide $100 million.
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Aurobindo Pharma acquires Dutch co
Hyderabad: Aurobindo Pharma (APL) has acquired the Netherlands-based generic pharmaceutical company, Pharmacin International.

To facilitate the buyout APL has through its wholly owned subsidiary Agile Pharma, Netherlands entered into share purchase agreement with Jerim and Jonghoud International of the Netherlands.

Under the terms of the share purchase agreement, Agile Pharma has acquired 100 per cent of the shares of Pharmacin International from Jerim and Jonghoud International. Pharmacin is a profit-making company with a turnover of over 6 million euros for the year ending December 2006 and a CAGR of over 30 per cent.

Pharmacin is engaged in the business of supply and licensing of generic pharmaceuticals in Netherlands and in select markets in Europe. It has a broad product portfolio in three segments- CNS, CVS and Gastroenterologicals. The company has a product dossier support of 200 and registrations for 63 customers in the Netherlands and Europe. It owns several product dossiers/market authorisations and Intellectual Property Rights.
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Lanco gets Rs565-cr road contract in Karnataka
Hyderabad: Lanco Group has won the bid for Bangalore-Hoskote-Mudbagal Road Work on Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis. This is the first BOT Project in the highway sector for Lanco. The project under NHDP Phase III A in Karnataka is estimated to cost around Rs565 crore. Lanco quoted with a positive grant of Rs194.94 crore, Reliance quoted Rs 199 crore. Other competitors for the project included Gammon India and Soma Enterprises.

The scope of the work includes widening of the 79.7 Km road from the existing two-lane to four-lane including design, engineering, construction, development, finance, operation, maintenance and tolling of Bangalore-Hoskote-Mudbagal section road from Km 237.7 to 318 km of NH4 for Karnataka.
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NTPC to build coal-fired plant in Lanka
New Delhi: NTPC has signed an agreement to build a 500-MW coal-fired power plant in Sri Lanka. NTPC will pick up 50 per cent stake in the project, which is to come up in the Sri Lankan port town of Trincomalee. The project would entail an investment of around $500 million. Sri Lanka's Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) will join NTPC in the project, which would be executed on a 70:30 debt-equity ratio and would be run on imported coal, an NTPC statement said. The plant is expected to commence operations in 2011.

The signing of the agreement will commence the process of site selection in Trincomalee, done on the basis of techno-economic and environmental feasibility studies and other relevant matters including availability of infrastructure according to a statement from NTPC.

The project would be executed through a joint venture between the CEB and NTPC and a power purchase agreement between the joint venture and CEB would be signed in the coming months, the statement said.

About 2.5 million tonne of coal required annually to fire the Trincomalee plant could be imported from either Indonesia or Australia.
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Videocon bid in trouble over discounting Daewoo bid price
Mumbai: Videocon Industries' plan to take over Daewoo Electronics for $750 million has hit turbulence as Daewoo's creditors are not agreeing to a proposal to reduce the acquisition cost.

The combined shareholding of the creditors in Daewoo is 97.5 per cent.

The Videocon-led consortium had agreed two months ago to pay Daewoo's creditors won 700 million ($750 million) for Daewoo, subject to due diligence. RHJ International, a part of the US private equity fund Ripplewood, is the other member of the consortium. The consortium's recently put in a new proposal, which is believed to have reduced the price tag of the acquisition by 13 per cent and needs support from more than 75 per cent of the creditors to go through. The deal will be cancelled otherwise.
Sources said the negotiations would be resumed if the Videocon consortium proposes an acceptable amendment.

Venugopal N Dhoot, chairman, Videocon Industries has categorically denied that his consortium asked for a revised price.

Daewoo Electronics has been run by creditors since the Daewoo conglomerate collapsed under $ 80bn of debt in 1999.
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