Daily News Roundup - May 4 2009

Reliance Industries increased its holding in Reliance Petroleum to 75.4% by buying Chevron’s 5% stake for Rs13.5bn. (ET)

IOC will take up 4% stake in ONGC-Reliance Industries alliance that plans to pick up stake in an oilfield in Venezuela. (ET)

Bharti Airtel entered into a JV with Alcatel-Lucent to manage its landline and broadband business. (ET)

Wipro won the Rs25bn contract from Unitech Wireless to provide IT services. (ET)

M&M enters into the sub-30HP tractor market. (FE)

PNB cuts its benchmark PLR by 50bps to 11%. (FE)

Siemens India will execute Rs7.2bn of the Rs13.8bn transmission contract awarded by Adani Power, balance will be executed by the German parent. (ET)

CL Technologies signed a 5 year multi-million dollar outsourcing deal with supply chain services firm UTi Worldwide. (ET)

Jindal Steel and Power is in advanced talks with Hudson Resources, Australia, to form a JV for exploration and mining of coking coal there. (ET)

Suzlon Energy has paid €30mn as part payment to Martifer SGPS SA for acquiring the latter’s stake in a Germany-based wind turbine maker.(TOI)

Solar power firm Cobol Technologies, owned by the promoters of Moser Baer, raises US$30mn through a sale of minority stake to Pangea Emerging Infrastructure Fund. (ET)

SREI Infrastructure Finance plans to raise up to Rs10bn from the market to meet its long term working capital requirements. (ET)

Balco is planning to close its plant-1, which produces 100,000 tonnes of aluminum every year, as the dip in prices makes production unprofitable.(BS)

Aditya Birla Nuvo plans to rejig its apparel business by opening 150 new stores at city centers, where footfall is higher, after closing 30 unviable stores.(BS)

Reliance Industries which faces possible penalties by the US administration for its business ties with Iran, has paid about Rs10mn for lobbying among US lawmakers.(BS)

Hindustan Unilever along with a few associations for glass and detergents, has filed writs in the Delhi and Bombay High Courts to get a stay against a safeguard duty imposition of 20% on import of soda ash from China.(BS)

Punj Lloyd Ltd is in talks with Areva NP and Westinghouse Electric for a tie-up to build nuclear power plants in the country.(BL)

Corus' US$480mn deal with a consortium of buyers to sell its Teesside steel mill "is in danger of being scrapped," leading British daily Financial Times has said.(DNA)

International Coal Ventures, an SPV created by five PSU majors including Coal India and SAIL, may bid for a coal block in Mozambique this month.(BL)

Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure has approached the competent authorities to seek a nod for the transportation tariff to be levied by it for ferrying Reliance Industries’ D6 Block gas.(BL)

Pipe manufacturer Man Industries has bagged a Rs13.5bn order from Middle East in April.(BL)

Jet Airways and Sahara India Commercial Corporation have told the Bombay High Court that both the parties would soon meet to sort out the ongoing issue related to the takeover deal of Sahara Airlines.(BL)

Tata Motors to bring Jaguar, Land Rover to India.(BL)

Tata Steel to consider restructuring the continental European operations of Corus. (BS)

GMR Infra may raise upto Rs30bn through PE route. (ET)

Sobha Developers plans to raise Rs3.5bn by offloading around 25% stake through preferential allotment and is expected to also evaluate the QIP route. (BS)

DLF plans to launch more mid-income housing projects in Kochi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, among other cities, and divest stakes in some hotel projects to generate liquidity in the current fiscal. (BS)

ACC has no plans to increase the prices of the commodity in Delhi. (BS)

DLF plans to raise Rs55bn through the sale of non-core assets such as power units and hotels to help it reduce its debt.

DLF is banking on Rs20bn of additional inflows from group company DLF Assets. (BS)

SBI reduces the interest rate on domestic term deposits by 25bps across maturities. (BS)

NTPC may set up 600MW hydel power plant in Bhutan. (ET)

Tata Steel may re-bid for Liberian mine. (ET)

Ranbaxy Laboratories is forced to withdraw all batches of a generic urinary infection antibiotic drug from the US market. (BS)

Talks between Jaguar Land Rover and the UK government over a financial aid package for the carmaker have reached an impasse. (ET)

Titan Industries to close its two Tanishq jewellery brand boutiques in the US. (ET)

Godrej Consumer is eyeing acquisitions worth US$1bn in emerging markets in this fiscal. (ET)

Reliance Industries may neither start any greenfield initiative nor raise new funds in this fiscal, as it looks to consolidate its diverse portfolio of biz. (ET)

ONGC Videsh and its partners, IOC and Oil India, are likely to invest about US$4bn to start production from a gas field they discovered in offshore Iran, in the next 3-4 years. (ET)

R-Power may not get entire Sasan coal. (ET)

GMR Infrastructure has tied-up funds for its 1,050MW power project in Kamalanga in Orissa (ET)

TCS has shelved plans to increase its headcount in Australia to around 2,000 (BS)

RNRL has decided to procure six ships for transportation of imported coal to its proposed 4,000MW UMPP in Krishnapatnam (ET)

IOC has forayed into the wind power sector by commissioning its first wind farm at Kandla in Gujarat (ET)

Wockhardt has reached an out-of-court settlement on three patent infringement cases in the US with Orion Corporation (BS)

Apollo Tyres to fully acquire a Netherlands-based premium tyre maker for an undisclosed sum (BS)

Parsvnath Developers is planning to cut its debt by a quarter by the end of FY10 (BS)

UTV earmarks Rs9bn for its movie production venture (BS)

Sterlite Technologies to raise Rs419mn by issuing warrants to promoters (BS)

Siemens, BHEL plans to form JV for manufacturing super critical and ultra super critical steam turbines. (ET)

Aditya Birla Nuvo is considering plans to raise fresh equity of about Rs15bn to finance the group’s life insurance business (BS)

L&T reaches an agreement to end a standoff over its 60MW Singoli-Bhatwari hydel project in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand (BS)





Inflation inches higher to 0.56% as food prices remain high. (ET)

State run banks will now charge 9.25% or less interest rate for the first 5 years on home loans up to Rs3mn. (ET)

Index of six core industries registered a growth of 2.9% in Mar’ 09 (ET)

New premium collection in the life insurance industry fell by 12% in Q4 FY09 to Rs348bn from Rs394bn last year. (ET)

Anti¬dumping duty on some auto parts likely.(Mint)

Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority is planning a 100km network of monorail in the Mumbai metropolitan area in next seven years.(BL)

Government has extended the special dumping duty on nylon tyre cord fabric imports from China for another 5 years. (ET)

State run oil companies cut jet fuel prices by 1% in tandem with the international prices. (ET)

India’s crude oil output fell 1.8% in FY09 to 33.5mn tons. (ET)

Planning commission has proposed to set up a National Electricity Fund with a corpus of Rs1-1.5trn to finance the development of T&D network of the state utilities. (ET)

DoT panel mulls new 2G spectrum pricing formula.(BL)

Indian gas companies may soon boast their first gas swap arrangement that could slash transportation costs by more than 50%.(BS)

Airport developer to raise over Rs 18bn by pledging revenues from passenger charges.(BS)

India plans to increase stockpiles of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu or its generic version by 10-fold, from 1mn to 10mn currently.(BS)

India’s exports declined a record 33.3% in March 2009, marking a contraction for the sixth consecutive month to US$11.5bn. (BS)

Number portability charges likely to be below Rs300. (BS)

India’s foreign exchange reserves increased by US$631mn to US$253.1bn during the week ended April 24. (BS)

Public-sector banks chalk out expansion plans to open at least 15,300 ATMs across the country by the end of this fiscal. (ET)

General insurance industry, comprising 16-odd players, has registered a drop in premium income growth for the fiscal 2008-09.(DNA)

Government has decided to create separate quality guidelines for medical devices and not treat them as drugs. (ET)

Government plans to impose a 20% safeguard duty on imported acrylic fibre (ET)

GSM mobile service providers are opposing an 11-digit mobile numbering proposal (BS)

Government may decide on steel safeguard duty next week. (ET)