Daily News Roundup - Jan 24 2012

Jet Airways said that it will rebrand its low-fare subsidiary JetLite as Jet-Konnect Airways by May this year.(ET)

Suzlon, Bharat Light and Power Pvt Ltd, and another company called Greenshore Energy, have shown interest in putting up large-scale wind farms in the seas near Tamil Nadu.(BL)

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) gave an assurance to the Supreme Court that it would pay from the beginning of next month value-added tax (VAT) on gas sale in Uttar Pradesh during the period of pendency of the case on double taxation – Central Sales Tax (CST) and VAT – in the Allahabad High Court.(BL)



Cera Sanitaryware Ltd will invest Rs 1.4bn to increase the capacities of its faucet and sanitaryware manufacturing plants at Kadi in Mehsana district of Gujarat in two years.(BL)

Wipro Technologies has launched Wipro SprintHR, a cloud based technology offering used to deploy Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management.(BL)

Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL), is looking to enter the factoring business. (BL)

Bajaj Lighting is in talks with domestic lamp makers to offload its excess production of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL).(BL)

Burdened with the impact of subsidising the retail losses of downstream oil marketing companies (OMCs), Oil India Ltd has asked the Union government to take the average of the last five years’ net profit for calculating the proportionate share of upstream companies, against the current practice of the last three years’ average.(BS)

GMR Infrastructure is understood to be giving final touches to raise close to Rs6bn through the private equity (PE) route to fund expansion of its highways business.(BS)

The Telecom Department has sought shareholding pattern of the Tatas in the erstwhile BATATA (now Idea), between 2004 and 2006, from the Corporate Affairs Ministry to see if there was any violation of licence norms with regard to cross holding of equity.(FE)

NTPC ltd expects to tie up funds for its 500 megawatts (MW) joint venture power project in Sri Lanka by September.(TOI)

Tiffany & Co, the world’s second-largest luxury jewellery retailer, is planning an India entry through a 51% joint venture with actress-turned-fashionist Reena Wadhwa, who is married to investment banker and Ambit group CEO Ashok Wadhwa.(ET)

The government has granted an additional area of 20.5 square kilometers in the prolific KG Basin to Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC) as the company’s fields extend beyond its block located near gas discoveries of Reliance Industries and ONGC. (ET)

Gamesa Wind Turbines Pvt Ltd announced that it has won an order from GAIL India Ltd for the supply of wind power turbines worth 25 MW. The order is worth about Rs1.5bn.(BL)
Economy Snippets

Iran has agreed to settle all the dues to Indian exporters in rupees through any bank (public or private) willing to facilitate the payment.(BL)

The Reserve Bank of India may leave key interest rates unchanged when it reviews its monetary policy. This is on account of persistent price pressures in the economy.(BL)

The Reserve Bank of India is believed to be examining the possibility of laying down guidelines for banks when dealing with loan arrangers.(BL)

According to a survey of professional forecasters by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), forecast for growth in gross domestic product (GDP) was scaled down by 60 basis points for 2011-12 and by 40 basis points for 2012-13. The revised GDP forecast for the current year now stands at seven%, down from 7.6 % earlier. For 2013, the growth forecast is now 7.3%, compared with 7.7 % projected earlier.(BS)