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Saturday,
May 26, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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McDonald's admits to using beef flavour
Punjab finalises ‘attractive’ VRS package
Doctor wins Opel Corsa car Escort service for
investors on cards |
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Uganda invites
Indian investment LG Elect begins PC assembly line Lack of consensus hinders privatisation Anti-hacking centre
brought to knees Canam introduces FSL for overseas education Mazda posts $ 1.99bn loss Kandla port
closed Kinetic to launch 3 bikes
Expansion cuts Ajanta profit
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McDonald's admits to using beef flavour
London/Chicago, May 24 But it said on Thursday the apology does not mean it was admitting to claims filed in a lawsuit alleging the company misled millions of customers by "secretly" adding the extract to its fries. On its U.S. website, McDonald's said it was sorry if consumers felt they had not been given complete information about the way its fries were cooked. Giving details of its cooking, it confirmed that a "natural flavoring" added to fries before they were sent to U.S. restaurants was a "beef flavoring." "Because it is our policy to communicate to customers, we regret if customers felt that the information we provided was not complete enough to meet their needs," the company said. "If there was confusion, we apologize," McDonald's said. The statement has been on the website for about two weeks, a McDonald's spokesman said, though a person looking at the McDonald's home page (http://www.mcdonalds.com) might have trouble finding the message. The issue hit the headlines this month after Harish Bharti, a native of India, filed a lawsuit in the USA accusing McDonald's of "secretly" lacing its French fries with beef extract. A slogan-shouting crowd of more than 500 attacked a McDonald's outlet on the outskirts of Mumbai, smashing equipment and property, and local food officials pledged to test the fries. McDonald's was forced to state that in India its fries did not contain any beef. Apology for confusion
Bharti said the statement on the website did not address the issues in the lawsuit. "I think it's a good start," he told Reuters on Thursday when reached in his Seattle office. "But until it is very sincere and clear, it is not going to have any impact on the outraged consumers." U.S. analysts who follow the company, which has sales of $40 billion a year, said they did not think the
French fry issue would have a financial impact on the company. "I don't think it's a big deal," said Ann Gurkin, an analyst who follows the company for Davenport & Co. As for the note on the website, she said, "It would have been nice if they said it more publicly."
Beef flavour
In 1990 McDonald's announced to great fanfare that it was switching the cooking of its fries to vegetable oil for nutritional reasons. But as the preparation of food under the group's famous Golden Arches came under scrutiny recently, McDonald's acted to calm the dispute. Tucked away in the "food facts" section of the U.S. part of its website was a statement from McDonald's apologizing for the confusion. The company confirmed that it added beef flavoring to its fries in the USA. "A small amount of beef flavoring is added during potato processing —at the plant," it said. The company added, "Our
French fries are cooked in vegetable oil at our restaurants." But the company disputes the contention that it adds the flavoring "secretly," Walt Riker, a spokesman at McDonald's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, said. "We absolutely disagree with the conclusions of this group associated with the litigation," Riker said. McDonald's said on the website that the frying process varies around the world to take account of "cultural or religious dietary considerations." In "predominantly Muslim countries — as in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa," McDonald's said it conforms to Halal standards, meaning the fries contain no beef or pork flavorings. "In India, where vegetarian concerns are paramount, no beef or pork flavorings are used in our vegetarian menu items," the company said. In Britain, where vegetarians are a sizable minority group, McDonald's issued a statement on Thursday saying its
French fries there contained no beef flavoring, unlike McDonald's fries in the USA. A McDonald's UK spokeswoman said the company wanted to reassure customers that its fries were indeed vegetarian.
Reuters |
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Punjab finalises ‘attractive’ VRS package Chandigarh The “attractive” VRS, which will be open for nearly 3.75 lakh government employees and 1.75 lakh PSUs, cooperative and municipal employees, will now come up for approval before the Cabinet, either in May end or early June. The schemes will remain in operation from July 1 to December 31, 2001. Authoritative sources disclosed that the VRS would be applicable to employees with over ten years of service and over 40 years of age, but no exceeding 54 years. Employees opting for VRS would be paid two months emoluments (pay and appropriate percentage of dearness allowance) for each completed year of service or their emoluments as on the date of seeking VRS, for the remaining period of service maximum of 60 months, whichever is less. Employees will also be entitled to the statutory payment of gratuity under the Gratuity Act, pensionary benefits (wherever applicable), leave encashment and travel concessions to the place within India where an employee is interested to settle down. VRS will not be applicable to the specialists/employees who have executed service bonds, serving abroad under special arrangement/bonds, employees against whom disciplinary proceedings have been contemplated, those appointed on contract basis, highly skilled and qualified employees who have undergone specified training and other category of employees as may be specified by the concerned authorities. The state government employees opting for VRS will be allowed to retain their government accommodation for two years after retirement by paying double the rent. Sources disclosed that any PSU, which seeks to implement VRS, will have to abolish posts of employees in the feeder cadre who retire voluntarily. As to the funding of the VRS, the entity would fund the scheme out of its own resources in the first instance. In case assistance from Punjab State. Renewal Fund is required, this would be provided as interest-free loan upto 75 per cent of the requirement. The loan would be for six years with a moratorium in the first year and repayment over the subsequent five years in quarterly instalments. Exgratia payments to an employee opting for VRS will be paid in cash within 45 days from the date of his retiring. Sources said the expectation was that VRS will evoke encouraging response from the employees. The government has for the past two years been announcing that it would downsize the administration to reduce the mounting non-plan expenditure which is mainly responsible for the growing deficits and burgeoning debt burden. At present over two-thirds of the State’s revenue earnings are being spent for paying salaries and pensions.
IPA
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Doctor wins Opel Corsa car Chandigarh, May 25 The ‘Hot Maal Cool Win’ contest was part of Compaq’s initiative to reach out to customers and build excitement around the Compaq Presario brand, India’s No 1 Home PC. Entries were then evaluated and winners selected on the basis of the best slogan written by a consumer. The winning slogan that won Dr Vikram Chadha a luxury car was “Like my wife, looks tender, sharp and nice”. Apart from the prizes that were for offer as part of the promotion , each walk-in customer also took home Compaq branded free gifts. Commenting on the promotion, Mr Ravi Swaminanthan, Director, Consumer Business, Compaq Computer, said, “This is the first time that a PC company has initiated such a large scale brand promotion to reach to its customers.
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Escort service for
investors on cards New Delhi, May 25 Addressing the "Destination India" seminar at Madrid on Thursday, Maran invited Spanish investors to invest in India to take advantage of the large domestic market and as an important and advantageous manufacturing location for the global market. According to a gist of his speech made available here, Maran said the escort service would be to help investors with the formalities for the speedy clearance of investment proposals. Assuring prospective investors of the safety of their investments in India, he said India is a signatory to MIGA (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency) and its legal framework. He made a special mention of the fact that repatriation of profits and the original investment was freely permitted in India. Maran is leading a high-powered official-cum-business delegation to the weeklong "Destination India" events being organized in Spain and Germany. Describing the setting up of special economic zones (SEZs) as a major initiative for attracting massive foreign investments, Maran said, "There are no trapdoors for foreign direct investment (FDI) anywhere. In fact, the comfort level for the foreign investors has been raised to the highest level. Of course, some physical operational problems are still there. This is so because the destination of FDI is the states."
IANS |
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Uganda invites
Indian investment Chandigarh, May 25 Mr Rwendeire said Uganda has a free market economy as well as a fully convertible currency, with no restrictions on inflow and outflow. Despite this, the Ugandan economy has witnessed only net inflows of currency, he said, adding that the return of investment were as high as 30 per cent. Uganda had to offer to foreign investors, a low tax structure, tax exemption on import of plant and machinery, duty drawback facilities, stable exchange rate, special start up incentives, allowance of 100 per cent foreign ownership and a supportive political climate had made his country a ‘great destination’ in Africa, which also provided duty free
access to countries like us, specially for garments and textiles. Mr Patrik Nyaika, Director, Land Resources and Development, Uganda Investment Authority, welcomed Indian investment specifically in the areas of dairy and food processing. Mr Amos Lugolobu, Director, Uganda Investment Authority highlighted investment opportunities in the Tourism sector, citing Uganda as the ‘Pearl of Africa’ with diverse flora and fauna, as well as a wealth of natural and man made attractions. Mr R.M. Khanna, Past Chairman, CII, stated that CII placed a very special emphasis on relations with Uganda and other African countries. This was evident from the establishment of CII’s Africa Desk to encourage business delegations between Africa and India as well as disseminate useful information.
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LG Elect begins PC assembly line New Delhi, May 25 Buoyed by the growth of the IT industry in India, the company also announced its strategy to consolidate its position in the Indian computer peripherals market. The PC Assembly Line, set up at Greater Noida with an investment of $ 10 million, has a capacity of 3.5 lakh units that can be upscaled to five lakh. It will initially focus on assembling 15 inch and 17 inch flat monitors, which are currently the fastest growing segment in the industry, said Mr N.S. Bindra, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, LG. Assembling of the 15 inch Flatron PC Monitor has started, but the commercial production of the 17 inch monitor will begin in August, he said. The company has targetted sales of five lakh PC Monitors this year and hoped to achieve an annual turnover of Rs 500 crore from this segment.
UNI
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Lack of consensus hinders privatisation New Delhi, May 25 “At the present time, there appears to be lack of political consensus amongst the coalition partners in the Central Government on economic reforms and privatisation of PSUs,” Ganesh said in his book “Privatisation in India”. Ganesh said “privatisation can succeed only if there is consensus among the ruling elite” through a political dialogue to allay the concerns on issues like retention of labour, ceiling on foreign holdings and maintenance of national interests. He, however, pointed out that despite the present government opting to proceed more quickly on disinvestment of PSUs than the previous ones, “the reluctance of the entrenched vested interests has slowed down decision making and implementation.” “This has resulted in a scenario where most of the recommendations of the disinvestment commission have remained unimplemented,” the book said. The book also warned against the impact of soft options on disinvestment instead of tough decisions saying measures like asking PSUs to buy back government shares out of their reserves could prove ‘extremely short sighted’. “The impression that all such ad hoc measures succeeded in giving investors is that government was desperate to bridge the budgetary deficit somehow without having to sacrifice control over PSU,” it said. According to the author government could implement many of the recommendations of the disinvestment commission profitably without taking recourse to panic driven-schemes., Substantial disinvestment, in excess of what is budgeted, is feasible if professional and innovative approaches are adopted and quick decisions taken, Ganesh noted. The book pointed out that the fledgling Department of Disinvestment (DoD) had provided focus and improvement to the disinvestment process, and expedited decisions on privatisation of a number of companies. “However, the existing procedures for implementation of disinvestment decisions need to be revised so that implementation could take place within a period of six months instead of 12 to 14 months at present,” it said.
PTI
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Anti-hacking centre brought to knees London Despite boasting sophisticated
defenses and some of the finest minds in computer security, the CERT coordination centre, the US government-funded early warning facility, was left powerless as its website was engulfed by a flood of bogus e-mail data requests. On Thursday, experts at the CERT which issues global alerts and advice on hacking and virus threats from the University of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were still battling to get their site back online as the well orchestrated assault continued unabated. To carry out the attack — known as a distributed denial of service — the hackers did not have to penetrate CERT's defences. Instead, they took control of other computers and used them to bombard the site with so many spurious requests for data that legitimate visitors were unable to get in. The centre's website is one of the primary security resources for IT professionals around the world. Since the attack began, the CERT has been forced to rely on e-mail and its telephone hotline to distribute information. Denial of service attacks are almost impossible to defend against. It is also difficult to trace the culprits, as they program the commandeered computers — known as zombies — to generate bogus e-mail addresses to obscure the source. Denial of service attacks are becoming an increasingly popular weapon for hackers. According to research published this month by University of San Diego's super computer centre, there are 4,000 such attacks worldwide every week. The same computer was attacked 102 times in one week.
By arrangement with The Guardian |
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Canam introduces FSL for overseas education Chandigarh, May 25 FSL, an educational organisation owned by ‘‘Daily Mail’’ newspaper from the UK has appointed Canam as their regional representatives for Northern India and has 18 regional offices all across the globe with their regional office for South Asia located in Delhi. FSL is providing a course curriculum in the specialised fields including Information Technology and Business Management. Mr Sukhmeet Grewal, Sr Vice President, Canam said that thousands of students are opting for education in foreign universities and colleges. He said the company understands the personal traits of students, their academic background and career goals before accepting them as clients. Mr Joe Victor South Asia desk, Ms Janice Schiffman USA, Mr Ian Harman UK, Ms Julia Shelley and Ms Sue Boyd Australia representing various universities/colleges also spoke.
Tokyo, May 25 The 155.24 billion yen ($1.29 billion) group net loss compared with a net profit of 26.16 billion yen a year earlier and was largely expected in financial markets after the automaker warned of a loss in April. Sales at Hiroshima-based Mazda, which is 33 per cent owned by U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co, skidded to 2.02 trillion yen from 2.16 trillion yen a year earlier, due in part to a weak performance in Japan and Europe. The deep loss reflected a one-off cost of nearly 155 billion yen to plug a hole in pension reserves and an additional charge from an early retirement plan for which 2,210 staff applied.
Reuters
Ahmedabad,
May 25 Ships docked at Kandla, hammered by a cyclone which killed more than 1,000 people in 1998, were moved away from jetties to minimise damage, port Chairman A.K. Joti told Reuters. "All normal port operations have been suspended," he said. The storm was drifting away from the coast on Friday, but Gujarat remained at risk, officials said. "It can still recurve and make landfall on the south Gujarat coast by Saturday evening," an official at the weather office in the state's main city Ahmedabad told Reuters. A U.S. Navy weather website, www.npmoc.navy.mil, showed the cyclone had moved slightly to the northwest and plotted a trajectory for the next three days that bypassed Gujarat.
Reuters
New Delhi, May 25 It would also roll out an economy variant of its recently launched 100cc motorcycle ‘Challenger’ by December 2001. Kinetic Motor Company Ltd will launch a 65cc scooterette priced at about Rs 22,000 in September this year. Kinetic Engineering Joint MD Sulajja Firodia Motwani today said the new launches would be made to achieve the company’s sales target of one lakh motorycles during this year.
PTI |
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Expansion cuts Ajanta profit WHEN our team’s Head of Research and Content pointed out that the results of Ajanta Pharma which they had e-mailed to our office looked lopsided, I sent out a mail to Arvind Agarwal, the CFO or Ajanta Pharma, seeking a clarification. Now, I know for a fact that Purushottam Aggarwal, the promoter the CMD of Ajanta Pharma is committed to transparency and Arvind, being a fellow member of the Chartered Accountants’
Institute strictly adheres to its accounting standards. Needless to say, Arvind was on the phone within minutes and he promised to mail me the reasons for the seemingly lopsided figures. For starters, the company had divested its bulk drug business and thus the topline dipped as the revenues from that stream disappeared. Nevertheless, the figures do not depict that the sale proceeds have enhanced the cash flows of the company and unlike many other companies, Ajanta has not squandered these funds making a non-synergic acquisition. Then came the most important factor — Ajanta Pharma has chosen to focus and expand on its Ethi+Care business by launching 20 new products for which it has also enhanced its sales work force. Notable here is the fact that notwithstanding the likely accruals from this investment over the next couple of years, the company has followed the progressive accounting policy of charging to revenue its entire expansion expenses. A quick jab at the calculator indicates that the same had reduced the PAT to sales percentage from 11 last year to 8 this year. Yet another quick jab at the calculator indicated that had it not been for this progressive accounting policy, the company could comfortably have logged a PAT to sales percentage of 16 per cent which would have doubled Ajanta Pharma’s bottomline and EPS. Now, just contrast this with the so called “propah” pharma MNC’s which are displaying unbridled enthusiasm to set up 100 per cent subsidiaries in India. Anand Rathi Finally, without getting into the merits or otherwise of the case — in the absence of any concrete evidence of insider trading as yet, has SEBI infringed on Anand Rathi’s constitutional right to earn a living by curbing all his business activities? Also, has all the good work done by Anand Rathi, again a fellow Chartered Accountant, in making the BSE the premier bourse again after the NSE stole a march over it, been forgotten. Obviously, the courts are competent to address all these issues, but in the interim, spare a thought for Rathi, the man who presided over the modernisation of the nation’s premier bourse. |
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CanFin Homes net up 19.74 pc Philips claims leadership in audios ICI India to prefer Astra Zeneca |
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BSNL Zydus Cadila Kurl-on J&K Bank Food Web site Global Trust Bank Philips |
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