Daily News Roundup - July 26 2010

SBI has raised US$1bn through a five-year senior unsecured bond issue at a fixed coupon rate of 4.5%.(BL)

Vodafone Group Plc might sell its indirect minority equity stake of 4.39% in Bharti Airtel, as part of a plan to get out of the group’s smaller investments in various companies across the world. (BS)

Tata Motors will consider a US$550mn sponsored overseas issue for its shares with differential voting rights. (ET)

ITC plans to invest Rs 230bn across sectors such as FMCG, hotels, paper and packaging over the next few years. (BL)

DLF is buying out the property arm of Dubai World, its foreign partner in the 50:50 joint venture to make Bidadi Knowledge City. (ET)

Dr Reddy’s Labs neither has any intention to offload stake in its domestic formulations business nor will it look at selling its German subsidiary Betapharm. (ET)

JSW Energy has initiated the process to borrow over Rs80bn to finance its forthcoming power projects in Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. (ET)

Wal-Mart may have to change the structure of its partnership with Bharti group due to a new rule governing wholesale trade. (ET)

TCS £600mn pension administration contract is potentially at risk of renegotiation due to cuts in UK’s IT budget. (ET)

Tata Steel approved a preferential issue of shares-cum warrants to parent company Tata Sons in a transaction worth about Rs160bn. This will increase the shareholding of Tata Sons in Tata Steel by 0.3% to about 31.33%. (ET)

SAIL's 20% share sale plan, which aims to generate up to Rs160bn may not happen this year due to certain regulatory hurdles. (BS)

Jindal Saw is in talks with North Clermont Coal, Australia, to buy up to 50% stake in one of its coal mine. (DNA)

CESC achieved financial closure for its proposed 600 MW project at Haldia.(BL)

Alstom bags two contracts, worth €450mn in total from GVK Industries to build units of the new Jegurupadu-III combined cycle power plant in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. (BL)

Hanung Toys plans to come out with Rs2.5bn QIP issue in the next couple of weeks. (BL)

Legrand is acquiring switchgear business of Indo Asian Fusegear for Rs6bn. (ET)

Ion Exchange has restructured its business operations and plans to diversify into biomass power generation in a joint venture with Belgium-based environmental technology major, Waterleau. (BS)

Strides Arcolab shareholders have approved increasing the borrowing limit of the company by Rs10bn to Rs25bn. (BS)

Mahindra Finance it expects regulatory approval for entering into the asset management business during the fiscal. (BS)

Air India unveiled turnaround plan that envisages the airline reaching operational break-even and wiping out Rs140bn of accumulated losses. (Mint)

Government today set Rs270-290 as the price band for the follow-on public offering of Engineers India. (DNA)

Goenka Diamond plans to scale up its operations and has earmarked an investment of upto Rs1bn to fuel its growth. (ET)

Uflex plans to raise around Rs2.5bn through a rights issue by September to support expansion plans and repay loans. (ET)

Oberois, the promoters may up stake in EIH to counter hostile bid. (BS)

The government set Rs270-290 as the price band for the follow-on public offer of Engineers India. (BS)

Foreign exchange reserves rose by US$2.5bn to US$282bn for the week ending July 16. (BL)

The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) has projected capital inflows of about US$73bn for 2010-11, much higher than inflows in 2009-10. (BL)

The PMEAC pegged the farm sector growth rate at 4.5% for the FY 2010-11. (BS)

The Union law ministry has suggested a penalty on telecom service providers (licensees) equivalent to 100% of their contract value if any equipment bought and installed by them is found to have any spyware or malware. (BS)

The government approved 18 foreign direct investment proposals worth ~Rs22.45bn. (BS)

7 of Europe’s 91 largest banks could not survive the bank stress tests. These include a Munich-based bank, one in Greece and five Spanish savings banks. (BS)

While pegging the economic growth at a conservative 8.5% for this fiscal, the Prime Minister’ Economic Advisory Council in its economic outlook report for 2010-11 pitched for tightening of the monetary and fiscal policies to check rising inflation. (TOI)