Daily News Roundup - Feb 28 2011

Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani in talks with Japan’s Orix Corporation to acquire its 23.87% stake in IL&FS. (ET)

Hero Investments will pledge its shares in Hero Honda with institutional investors to raise about Rs35bn in short-term debt to buy Honda Motor’s stake in their joint venture. (ET)

Infosys faces tax, visa fraud charges in US. (ET)



Reliance Power has emerged as the front runner among six short-listed entities for a tender floated by Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation to buy 3,000MW of power for 25 years, starting 2014. (ET)

CBI arrested Mr Abhay Kumar Srivastava, Chairman and MD of Nalco, his wife and two others on charges of accepting bribes from an unidentified person. (ET)

Future Group to sell stake in non-core business, plans to use funds to repay Rs34bn debt on Pantaloon Retail’s books. (ET)

Fortis may buy 25.6% more in Australian dental chain for Rs4.6bn. (ET)

Panacea Biotec signed a non-exclusive marketing agreement with Uruguay’s Laboratorios Clausen SA, allowing the Latin American firm to market the Indian company’s organ transplant drug Pangraf in Europe. (ET)

Ansal API is looking at a fund infusion of about Rs5bn from a host of PE investors, including IL&FS Investment Managers and Red Fort Capital, for its ongoing construction work in north India. (ET)

PTC India plans to raise Rs5-7bn in mid-March through the maiden public offer of its subsidiary PTC Financial Services. (ET)

SAIL’s Rs80bn followon public offer is likely to hit the capital market in the beginning of the next fiscal. (ET)

Jindal Steel & Power plans to ramp up Angul project capacity to 20mtpa. (BS)

Educomp picks majority stake in Gateforum. (BS)

ONGC has notified three discoveries one each in Cambay and Krishna Godavari on land basins and one new pool discovery in KG shallow offshore basin. (BL)

GVK signs pact for road project in Gujarat. (BL)

Income-Tax Department has slapped a tax demand of over Rs 4.5bn on Infosys Technologies for wrongfully claiming tax exemption on onshore services by declaring them as software exports. (BL)

Coal India raises prices by 30% for key sectors. (BL)

NCC announced that the company will achieve financial closure by May for the Rs70bn, 1,320MW thermal power project it is setting up in partnership with Gayatri Projects at Krishnapatnam in AP. (BL)

Oriental Bank of Commerce expects capital infusion of about Rs 10bn during the next quarter. (BL)

JLR to step up component sourcing from India. (BS)

Reliance Power will soon enter into a power purchase agreement with the Uttar Pradesh government for 2,456MW. (BS)

NCC is gearing up to dilute 15-20% stake in its wholly owned subsidiary NCC Infrastructure Holdings. (DNA)
Economy Snippets

Foreign exchange reserves went up by US$2bn to US$301bn, the highest level since August 2008, in the week ended February 18. (DNA)

Corporate Affairs Ministry announced that it has notified all the 35 accounting standards converged with IFRS; these converged standards will be called as IND AS. (BL)

Indian economy is set to revert to the "pre-crisis" growth level of 9% (+/– 0.25%) in 2011-12, says the annual Economic Survey for 2010-11. (BS)

I&B Ministry rejects DoT plan to auction 700MHz. (BL)

Union Railway minister announced plans to add 1,300km to the 64,000km network of Indian Railways, 56 more express trains and showed a Plan outlay of Rs576bn in her third budget in the UPA government. (FE)