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| Friday,
October 13, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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700 cr Honda base for Gurgaon Nobel for saying
blindingly obvious Nobel for founders of
IT revolution Idma Labs forays
into biotechnology Unilever’s offer
opens on Nov 27 Workers of the world united by stress |
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Banks ‘write off’
476 cr of defaulters Agitation
hits Maruti production
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700 cr Honda base for Gurgaon TOKYO, Oct 12 (UNI) — In a major decision, Japanese Honda Motors Company today announced to set up a Rs 700-crore export base station for South Asia in Gurgaon. The announcement was made by Honda Motors President K. Suzuki after meeting with Haryana Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala at Honda headquarters here. The Honda Motors Company is already in the process of setting up a Rs 500-crore project in Gurgaon to manufacture two wheelers. The establishment of the export base station in Gurgaon will bring an additional investment of Rs 700 crore to Haryana. Once this additional unit comes into operation, the company will manufacture 5 lakh two wheelers, including motorcycles and scooters, annually. This is the only project where an expansion has been announced by the company even before the initial project has started production. During their meeting with Mr Chautala, Finance Minister Sampat Singh and other members of the delegation, the Honda Motors top brass expressed its
satisfaction with facilities extended to the company by the state government. During the meeting, Mr Chautala hoped that would be a pioneering company for Haryana to attract further Japanese investment in the state. With the setting up of the export facility in Gurgaon, Haryana’s economy would benefit worth crores of rupees. The company proposes to bring up additional manufacturing units next to its manufacturing area coming up at Gurgaon, which is expected to announce production from May-June next year. During the day, the Chief Minister and his delegation also met Japan External Trade Organisation (JETO) President Yoshi Hike Saeki. |
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Nobel for saying
blindingly obvious BERKELEY, Oct 12 (Reuters) — Prof Robert McFadden of the
University of California at Berkeley expressed stunned surprise on Wednesday at news he had shared the Nobel Prize for Economics, saying he felt his work on econometrics had been a “blindingly obvious” next step for economic theory. “I was very surprised, shocked and stunned at winning” Prof McFadden (63) said form his Berkeley, California, home. Prof McFadden and Prof James Heckman of the University of Chicago shared the prize for their work in microeconometrics, on the boundaries of economics and statistics. “What I did, beginning in the 1960s, was to take the economic theory of self-interest, which governs economic behaviour, and apply it to life’s big decisions: when to get married, how many children to have, what occupation to choose,” Prof McFadden said. “In retrospect, it all seems blindingly obvious, but at the time it wasn’t.” Prof McFadden said his work developing economic methods to take into account individual choices about jobs or places of residence was intended to provide more analytical tools for other economists doing work with more practical applications. Prof McFadden noted that he and fellow laureate Prof Heckman had been friends and colleagues who had developed and exchanged ideas for some 30 years. “The work is closely related and to some extent developed in parallel, he said. “In both cases, the common theme is to use economic theory
to study individual behaviour. Prof McFadden began his work at Berkeley in the early 1960s, continued it at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s and returned to Berkeley in 1990. He said he planned
to devote his share of the nine million Swedish crowns ($ 913,100) prize money to his farm in northern California’s wine country — a place where, as the saying goes, it is easy to make a small fortune: just start with a big one. “I’m going to repeat that old joke, but it happens
to be true,” Prof McFadden said. “I’m just going to keep farming until the prize is gone”. |
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Idma Labs forays
into biotechnology CHANDIGARH, Oct 12 — Idma Laboratories, a Chandigarh-based company which runs India’s largest quality testing laboratories, besides a pharma and consumer products division, has forayed into biotechnology. The company, which came out with a public issue in 1996, has set up a biotechnological division at a cost of Rs 10 lakh after two years of ground work and has announced some new drugs,’’ said Dr H.M. Dani, Director of Idma, at a press conference here today. Dr Dani, who is spearheading the company’s R and D efforts, said Idma’s research team is working on drug designs which do not affect DNA and have no side-effects. These new formulations will be marketed as food supplements, health drinks and fortifying nutrients. The company is exploring the possibility of a tie-up with global health food companies, he said. Idma Labs, which reported a turnover of Rs 8 crore last fiscal and expects it to rise to Rs 15 crore this year, hopes to generate additional sales of about Rs 10-15 crore from products to be made by the biotechnological division. Mr R.P. Chandel, Manager, Business Development, said the company would also market naturally derived insect repellents and insecticides. |
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Unilever’s offer opens on Nov 27 MUMBAI, Oct 12 (PTI) — Unilever’s offer to acquire the 24.62 per cent shareholding in International Bestfoods Ltd (IBL) will open on November 27 and close on December 26, 2000. The offer was being made as per SEBI (SAST) regulations, following the international acquisition of Bestfoods USA by Unilever, according to a company release here today. The shares were being acquired by Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), Unilever’s subsidiary in India, it said adding, Unilever already beneficially owns Bestfoods USA’s 75.38 per cent equity in IBL. The offer, approved by SEBI, was to acquire all the 14,40,205 shares of IBL, held by different non-Unilever shareholders, at a price of Rs 173 per share. The offer price was based on the average of last 26 weeks’ high and low at the Bombay Stock Exchange. The statement said if as a result of the offer, the public shareholding falls to 10 per cent or below, Unilever/ HLL would make a second offer as per SEBI regulations to acquire the remaining outstanding shares, within three months of the closure of this offer. |
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Workers of the world united by stress THE workers of the world are, according to a United Nations report, united in just one thing these days: record levels of stress. What is more, the report warns, anxiety levels are set to dramatically increase in the coming years as globalisation continues its relentless march, and the economic costs for business will be massive. In a landmark survey examining stress in the workplace in five countries, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that levels of anxiety, burnout and depression are spiralling out of control. The problem is costing employers billions of pounds in sick leave and lost working time, and often leaves frayed employees grappling with a series of complex mental disorders for years afterwards. The study focused on the problems of stress and mental illness at work in the UK, the United States, Germany, Finland and Poland. It found that despair at work is a growing problem in all five countries, with as many as one in ten workers affected. Depression in the workplace is the second most disabling illness for workers after heart disease, the report warns, and is set to grow dramatically as new technologies multiply. Downsizing, layoffs, mergers, short-term contracts and higher productivity demands have all exacted their toll in the last 10 years, leaving many workers frazzled and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Workers worldwide confront, as never before, an array of new organisational structures and processes which can affect their mental health,’’ the report says. In the UK as many as three in 10 employees experience mental health problems and at any given time one in 20 Britons is fighting off ``major depression’’. “The self-reported occurrence of anxiety and depression (in the UK) ranges from 15 to 30 per cent of the working population,’’ the report says. The reasons for this are twofold: people find it hard to adapt to new technology and cannot keep up with constantly changing working practices. “These trends represent a wake-up call for business,’’ the ILO says. “For employers, the costs are felt in terms of low productivity, reduced profits, high rates of staff turnover and increased costs of recruiting and training replacement staff.’’ In the USA the picture is equally bleak. One in 10 workers suffers from clinical depression and the problem is getting worse. Some 200m working days are lost every year because of stress, and the cost of treating anxiety-ridden workers tops US$43bn annually. Some 40 per cent of workers complain that their job is very, or extremely, stressful. Unrealistic deadlines, poor management and inadequate childcare arrangements are to blame, the ILO says. As much as 4 per cent of the 15-country European Union’s gross national product is ploughed into treating the stressed and mentally ill. But it is in Finland that work-related stress seems to have reached epidemic proportions. More than half of the workforce in this nordic country is blighted with some kind of stress-related symptom, and 7 per cent of Finnish workers are ``severely burnt out’’. Worn out, increasingly cynical and suffering from insomnia, the average Finnish worker’s performance is badly impaired and the country’s suicide rates are high. In Germany, 7 per cent of workers opt for early retirement because they are stressed and depressed, the report says, and Poland’s workforce is increasingly prone to anxiety as joblessness soars in the wake of the collapse of communism. People who have time off because of nervous breakdowns are often stigmatised, and find it hard to pick up where they left off. The World Federation for Mental Health this week warned that by 2020, stress and mental disorders will overtake road accidents, Aids and violence as the primary cause of lost working time. — By arrangement with The Guardian |
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Nobel for founders of
IT revolution A RUSSIAN and two Americans who sparked the information technology industry revolution shared the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday. The US$918,000 prize went to Zhores Alferov (70) of St Petersburg, Herbert Kroemer (73) of Santa Barbara, California, and Jack Kilby (77) of Texas. Prof Kilby was honoured for his part in the invention of the microchip, or the monolithic integrated circuit. The other two invented and developed the semiconductors that made fast transistors possible. Between them they paved the way for radio link satellites, mobile phones, CD players, bar code readers, laser pointers, magnetic resonance cameras, electronic watches, pocket calculators and personal computers. “Two simple but fundamental requirements are put on a modern information system for it to be practically useful,’’ said the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. “Through their inventions, this year’s Nobel laureates laid a stable foundation for modern information technology.’’ Prof Kilby holds 60 US patents. His first simple microchip — developed at Texas Instruments on September 12, 1958 — became the basis of a trillion dollar industry. “Without Kilby it would not have been possible to build the personal computers we have today,’’ said Hermann Grimeiss, of the Swedish Royal Academy. “And without Alferov, it would not be possible to transfer all the information from satellites down to earth or to have so many telephone lines between cities.” — The Guardian |
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Banks ‘write off’
476 cr of defaulters CHANDIGARH, Oct 12 — Mr N.K. Gaur, General Secretary of the Punjab Bank Employees Federation and State Sector Bank Employees Association, said here today that the managements of various banks were entering in to compromising deals with loan defaulters under pressure from the RBI. Defaulters pay only the principal amount and the interest, which runs into crores of rupees in several cases, has been waived. About Rs 50,000 crore, loans (NPAs) were due against about 4,700 industrialists. The seven associate banks, including the State Bank of Patiala, have written off about Rs 476.64 crore of defaulters. No separate account of the written off amount is being maintained. The written off amount is transferred to the Advances Under Collection Accounts. In associate banks the amount in such accounts has gone up to Rs 1599.93 crore by the end last financial year while it is Rs 1188.57 crore till the end of the previous financial year. Mr Gaur said till March 31, 1999, the NPAs in associate banks amounted to Rs 4,575 crore and the figure rose to Rs 4527.01 crore by the end of last financial year in spite of the fact that Rs 476.64 crore was written off during the period. |
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Agitation
hits Maruti production NEW DELHI, Oct 12 (UNI) — Nearly 4,700 employees of Maruti Udyog Limited today boycotted work cutting daily output by 86 per cent as the company forbade entry to the warring workers demanding an undertaking that they will not indulge in any protests and strikes. Director (Finance) A.R. Halasyam admitted that production has been hampered but the company was making a few cars with skeletal staff. The company will be able to produce mere 200 cars today as against the normal production level of 1,500 cars a day. The company, in a statement issued here, termed the strike as illegal and said the workmen have been notified that only those workers shall enter the factory who give an undertaking in writing that they will not indulge in any activity which adversely affect the production and discipline. “The workmen who do not give the undertaking would be deemed to be on illegal strike... the management is not making any pre-condition for workmen to join their duty. In terms of the contract of employment the workmen are duty-bound to adhere to norms of discipline and give normal output,” it said. Maruti Udyog Employees Union (MUEU) treasurer and spokesperson G.K. Walia said the workers have decided against signing the undertaking. “This morning, the management wanted the workers to sign an undertaking before letting them into the factory. Signing it would have meant losing our fundamental rights and so none of our 4,700 members have gone into the plant. We have not called for a strike. |
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Hard landing for software shares FRESH profit warnings from leading hi-tech companies sent tremors through the world’s stock markets on Wednesday as nervous investors contemplated the advent of a ferocious bear market in new economy shares. Share prices were savaged in the far East, Europe and the USA amid concerns that banks may be exposed to credit-related losses. A wave of selling began in Tokyo overnight then spread to London, where £30bn ($43bn) was wiped off the value of the stock market before a partial recovery on Wall Street last night. New technology stocks were hardest hit by the renewed bout of market jitters, and the US Nasdaq index was close to its lowest point of the year - and down 2,000 points from its peak in the spring - following disappointing trading reports from Motorola and Lucent. Markets in Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Amsterdam also witnessed hefty markdowns as dealers took fright at the prospect of higher oil prices and widening bond spreads exacerbating the slowdown in the US economy and jeopardising the chances of a ``soft landing’’. Telecoms groups, dotcoms and financial services all fell in New York during the morning. By lunch the Nasdaq had recovered most early losses but analysts were still pessimistic about the outlook. ``It’s a dead cat bounce,’’ one said. Outside the technology sector the financials were still being hurt by rumours about trading losses related to junk bonds. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has fallen sharply this week amid concerns that it has suffered losses as high as $500m in US junk bonds. Rumours escalated after the bank blamed such losses for reporting unexpectedly poor results last month. The losses were partly caused by notes issued by ICG Communications. Anxieties were increased by the departure of Peter Karches, a 25-year veteran of the bank with overall responsibility for fixed income, just before results were announced. Spokesman Ray O’Rourke said reports of high-yield losses were ``greatly exaggerated”. Lucent was the trigger for yesterday’s selling spree when it issued its third profits warning this year. Shares in the company itself fell 30 per cent to just under $22 after it warned of a slowdown in spending by large telecoms firms. It also said third-quarter earnings would be significantly lower than expected. Yahoo!, the web portal, was also trading at a 52-week low after falling 15 per cent at one point yesterday to below $70. It had raised concerns about its dependence on online advertising in a results announcement on Tuesday night. The mood of gloom was deepened when Motorola expressed caution about the potential for handset growth, leading to a knock-on effect on European semi-conductor stocks, including Epcos, Siemens and Infineon. Market economists urged investors not to panic about blue-chip shares outside the technology sector yesterday. Ian Shepherdson at High Frequency Economics, said: ``The only fundamental thing is that lots of tech stocks were very expensive. This is not an end to economic expansion.” ``There was a bubble in the tech sector and we are now seeing the air come out of it.” Even after the sell-off Yahoo! was still trading at 250 times this year’s earnings, for instance. October 11 marked the 10th anniversary of the bull market in the Dow Jones index of blue-chip shares. — By arrangement with The Guardian |
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