Daily News Roundup - Dec 9 2009

Reliance Industries is expected to buy out a fifth of LyondellBasell’s US$27bn gross debt and seek a rollover of the balance after acquisition, as a step towards gaining confidence of creditors in its plans to acquire the world’s third largest petrochemical company. (BS)

ONGC Videsh has pulled out from the exploration block 5B in Sudan and has written off its investment of US$90mn made in the block. (ET)

L&T secured a contract valued at Rs8.4bn from NPCIL for construction of the main plant civil works of reactor 3 and 4 at Kakrapar Atomic Power Project near Surat. (BS)

L&T has accepted all demands in its implementation agreement with the Uttarakhand government on the 99MW Singoli-Bhatwari hydel project in the hilly Rudraprayag district. (BS)

GSM operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular among others are set to be charged a one-time fee for all 2G radio frequencies they hold over the 6.2 MHz mark. (ET)

Symantec Corporation and Wipro inked a new partnership under which Wipro Infotech will offer data loss prevention & back-up and recovery infrastructure consultancy services based on Symantech Technology. (FE)

JSW Group is planning to set up minor ports in states where it has a major presence through its steel and power plants. (FE)

ICICI bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank have launched home loan schemes which combine fixed and floating interest rates. (FE)

Comviva (formerly Bharti Telesoft) is in talks with several telecom service providers, including group company Bharti Airtel, to launch a SIM card that allows up to 10 users to share the same mobile phone with their own specific numbers. (BS)

Tata Tea, which acquired several global beverage brands in the last three years, will focus on bringing them together and making it a seamless international brand. (BL)

Mahindra Aerospace, the aerospace arm of Mahindra & Mahindra, is readying the prototype of a small private aircraft built in collaboration with state-owned National Aerospace Laboratories. (BS)

RBI has found and taken action against 17 cases of irregularities by companies that raised FCCBs since April 2005 – including US$25mn raised by Country Club, US$100mn by Hotel Leela Venture, US$105mn by Educomp Solutions, US$180mn by 3i Infotech and Rs51.4bn by Reliance Communications. (BS)

Ranbaxy said it will sell its 50% stake in its Japanese joint venture Nihon Pharmaceutical Industry (NPI) to partner Nippon Chemiphar. (ET)

Nestle India announced that its board has approved the proposal to acquire Speciality Foods' healthcare nutrition business. (BL)

HCL Technologies bagged a multi-million pound, five-year infrastructure management and transformation order from News International - a UK subsidiary of News Corporation. (BL)

Videocon Group promoted Next Retail is open to offloading a minority stake ranging from 15-20% to private equity players to garner funds for expansion. (BL)

Essar Group has entered into the Rs800bn consumer durables and IT products business through the acquisition of X-Cite. (ET)

Standard Chartered Bank has extended a US$1bn line of credit to Essar Oil to part finance its acquisitions of Royal Dutch Shell’s refinery assets in Europe. (ET)

Textile major Alok Industries has decided to withdraw from the realty segment by 2012. (BS)

Autoline Industries has drawn up Rs2.5bn brownfield expansion plan which will be funded through internal accruals and term loans. (BL)

Mahindra Systech, the auto components arm of the Mahindra group, plans to consolidate its business by merging Mahindra Ugine Steel, Mahindra Composites, Mahindra Forgings as well as unlisted entities such as Mahindra Gears, Mahindra Castings and Engines Engineering. (BL)

Gujarat NRE Minerals Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Gujarat NRE Coke, is raising AUS$50mn through placement of shares to several unidentified international institutional investors. (BL)

Godrej Properties' IPO was subscribed by anchor investors JF India Fund, JF Eastern Smaller Companies Fund, Ward Ferry Management Ltd and The Royal Bank of Scotland for Rs 899mn at Rs530/share. (BL)

NDTV sold most of its indirect stake in NDTV imagine to Time Warner in a deal worth US$117mn .(ET)

Sakthi Sugars has allotted 1.8mn equity shares to three institutional investors by conversion of FCCBs worth US$8.1mn held by them. (ET)

DB Corp will launch its initial public offering to raise about US$83mn on Friday. (ET)

JSW Energy's Rs27bn public offer got over-subscribed 1.48 times on Tuesday. (FE)


Ministry of New and Renewable Energy minister said that about 1,300MW of solar power would be added over the next three years. (BS)

West Bengal became the forerunner in mega-watt level solar power generation with the commissioning a 2MW grid-connected solar photovoltaic plant at Jamuria, near Asansol. (BS)

The Department of Telecommunications says it is being forced to curtail its 3G auction plans from four slots to three. (BS)

The government sought Parliament’s approval for additional spending of Rs257bn on fertiliser subsidies, food and for equity infusion in Air India, among other heads in the current financial year. (BS)

The EGoM on the Dhabol power project reviewed the non-payment of Rs4.7bn by state insurance companies to Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd, increasing gas supply and timely commissioning of Phase III. (BS)

The Ministry of Finance is in favour of scrapping the practice of issuing oil bonds to government-owned oil marketing companies and not only wants the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to rework the underrecovery figure for the current year but has also decided to look at the issue of oil subsidies only in February 2010. (BS)

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has told Bharti Airtel to provide all required information to the auditor by December 14 who had sought information through two questionnaires on August 12 and September 12. (BS)

The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday said it was expecting five merchant power plants to come up in the state with a total installed capacity of 10,000 Mw by 2012. (BS)

The government expects credit offtake to pick up in the coming months on the back of policy steps taken by the RBI to boost credit growth. (BS)

The Andhra Pradesh government has drawn up an ambitious plan to develop 13 minor ports over the next decade and targets 200mn tons by 2019-20. (BL)

The Market Stabilisation Scheme is likely to comeback as the RBI moves to remove excess liquidity from the banking system. (BL)

Successful bidders of 3G spectrum in the upcoming auctions may have to pay only 25% of the bid amount initially and can pay the remaining in the next financial year when they receive airwaves. (ET)

RBI is likely to ask banks to impose a ceiling on their investments in mutual funds and also prescribe norms for such investments. (ET)

States are expected to raise a record Rs700bn leading up to the end of the fiscal. (ET)

The Centre refuted reports that there is 30-40% siphoning off of allotted funds under the NREGS. (ET)

India faces a shortage of 70MT of coal this fiscal and the demand supply gap in 2011-12 may reach about 51MT. (ET)

The government targets to allot 17 port development projects to private players under its ambitious National Maritime Development Programme. (FE)