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NTT DoCoMo enters India
Industry grows by 4.8% in Sept
Economic woes increase
Indian markets 3rd most volatile: SEBI
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Spectrum Allocation Policy
Oil eases further
No fuel price cut for now: Deora
Hindalco raises loan for Novelis
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NTT DoCoMo enters India
New Delhi, November 12 Through a joint offer with Tata Sons, DoCoMo will also have to make an open offer to acquire up to 20 per cent of the outstanding common shares of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra), which is listed on the Indian bourses, as per Indian regulatory laws. Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra)'s net loss for the second quarter ended September 30 stood at Rs 47.35 crore. TTSL (M) shares were up 7.60 per cent to close at Rs 17.99 on the BSE. "As a result of the caiptal alliance, the partners expect to expand mobile commnucation operations in the fast-grwoing Indian mobile market aiming to increase operating revenue and achieve steady business growth," a Tata press statement said. NTT DoCoMo now joins foreign telecom firms like Vodafone (UK), Maxis (Malaysia), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia), Etisalat (UAE) and Telenor (Norway), which are present in India through local JVs. Earlier, the NTT board approved the investment. DoCoMo has been trying to enter the Indian market for some time. Tata Teleservices has also been trying to sell part of its stake for a while and it was in talks with South Korea Telecom two years ago, but the talks failed due to disagreement over price. Tata Teleservices has 30 million subscribers, making it the sixth-largest telecom company in India on that parameter. That the Indian market is lucrative was more clear since the valuation of local companies started attracting huge premium. Swan Telecom, a new licencee but yet to start the service, got a valuation of $900 million for a 45 per cent stake from the UAE's Etisalat, giving it a $2 billion tag. More recently, Unitech Wireless sold a 60 per cent stake in the company to Norway's Telenor for Rs 6,120 crore or $1.9 billion. This acquisition is DoCoMo's largest in almost eight years. In India 9 million mobile-phone customers are being added per month, or about 60 per cent more than the total additions in Japan last year. The Tokyo-based company is resuming expansion overseas after failed investments in some parts of the world. Analysts said the company has shifted to developing countries with room for further growth. DoCoMo had cut its revenue forecast last month because of weak handset sales in Japan, where about 80 per cent of people already own mobile phones, and as KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp slash fees to lure customers. — PTI
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Industry grows by 4.8% in Sept
New Delhi, November 12 Finance minister P Chidambaram said after the poor results reported for the month of August 2008, the IIP figures for September were encouraging. However, Ficci secretary-general Dr Amit Mitra said: “Growth is difficult to sustain or pick-up in the coming months in view of the production cuts recently announced by some of the major corporates in real sectors like steel, automobiles etc. and also because of the weakening export demand in sectors like textiles”. Ficci observed that the latest figures of IIP were indeed a matter of serious concern because many employment-intensive industries in the sectors like cotton textiles, apparels, jute and other vegetable fibres, wood, furniture, leather and leather products etc. had shown a negative growth in September. “Most of these sectors are dominated by SME players and also some of these sectors are heavily dependent on exports. Since the global demand is weakening, further fall is expected in these sectors which would affect the SME sector in a major way,” it said. But, Dr L.K. Malhotra, president, PHDCCI, said continuous monitoring of economic situation at the highest level of the government and the proactive approach of the finance ministry and RBI to maintain stability in the financial sector as well as the real economy had helped. “It is a matter of some satisfaction that India’s industrial production grew 4.8 per cent in September, compared to 1.3 per cent in August. However, this rate of growth is clearly reflective of the slow down in Indian economy when compared to the growth rate of 7 per cent recorded during the same month last year,” he said.
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London, November 12
"We are certainly prepared to cut ... again, if that proves to be necessary," Bank of England Governor Mervyn King told a news conference after UK inflation was forecast to be minimal. The International Monetary Fund withheld official backing for a $6 billion bailout plan for Iceland, the Financial Times reported, putting loans to the North Atlantic island nation under threat. Some of British banking giant Barclays' biggest shareholders have threatened to vote against a planned £7 billion capital raising unless it improves the terms of the deal, British newspapers said. Aides to US President-elect Barack Obama, meanwhile, were playing down reports of tension with the Bush administration over help for the stricken car industry. A feud within Japan's cabinet over whether rich people should get payouts as part of a stimulus package looked set to be put aside after delaying the plan for weeks. Questions were also beginning to be asked about just how much help governments can give. See-saw session
Financial markets seesawed again under the combined pressure of a global economic downturn and the worst financial crisis in 80 years. Wall Street looked set for a flat to negative start and European shares dipped in and out of positive territory after losing more than 4 per cent on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the World Bank said more countries were seeking its help. World Bank president Robert Zoellick said global trade may drop next year for the first time in more than a quarter of a century as the worldwide credit crisis cuts into trade financing. "It is our estimate that trade could actually fall, not grow more slowly or have growth fall, but actually fall next year, for the first time since 1982," Zoellick said in an interview with Reuters ahead of a meeting of world
leaders. Zoellick said the bank expected its lending to increase to $35 billion this year from $13.5 billion last year.— Reuters |
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Indian markets 3rd most volatile: SEBI
Mumbai, November 12 The report said the annualised volatility of the BSE benchmark index Sensex increased to 30.6 per cent in 2007-08 from 27.6 per cent in the previous year. Similarly, the NSE Nifty recorded annualised volatility of 32.1 per cent in 2007-08 compared to 28 per cent in the previous year. Annualised volatility is a measure of the amount by which an underlying index fluctuates. The BSE Sensex touched the yearly high of 21,206.77 on January 10, 2008, and the lowest level of 12,425.52 on April 2, 2007, in 2007-08. The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty appreciated by 19.7 per cent and 23.9 per cent, respectively, on March 31, 2008, over March 31, 2007. The BSE Sensex gained 2,572 points to close at 15,644 on March 31, 2008, from 13,072 on March 31, 2007. The Nifty also added 913 points to close at 4,735 at the end of March 2008 over 3,822 recorded at the end of March 2007. India's annual return on a point-to-point basis was the fourth-highest in the world after the HERMES index of Egypt (56.3 per cent) JCI of Indonesia (33.7 per cent) and IBOV of Brazil (33.1 per cent). — PTI
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Cut costs, Tata tells group companies
New Delhi, November 12 When contacted, a Tata Sons spokesperson said: "The senior managements of the Tata group companies have been advised to be sensitive and conscious of the difficult financial circumstances existing today and have been requested to be proactive to focus on cash flows and conserve expenditure wherever prudently possible." The Tatas are gearing themselves up to face the situation. They are being proactive in managing their companies and not letting the circumstances lead them, the spokesperson added. In a letter to the CEOs and MDs, Ratan Tata, who is also chairman of India's Investment Commission and a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry, asked his top managers to review business strategies outlining a six-point action plan keeping in mind the worsening credit crisis. The leader of the over $62 billion group has asked his top honchos to focus on conserving cash and put off expansion through the inorganic route unless the acquisitions were strategic in nature. Tata also advised the CEOs and MDs to go slow on capacity expansions, cut costs, and improve operational efficiencies, while increasing efforts to tap into all available credit lines. The global financial turmoil has affected some of the plans of the group companies, such as Tata Motors failing to get full subscription of its twin rights issue to mop up Rs 4,150 crore to part fund the $2.3-billion acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover. Asking group companies to go slow in acquisitions is also contrary to the group's previous strategy of expanding through the inorganic route, which has seen it pulling off some of the biggest global acquisitions that Indian industry has seen, such as the $12.1-billion takeover of Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus in early 2007 by Tata Steel. — PTI
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Spectrum Allocation Policy
New Delhi, November 12 A Bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar asked the government to file its response within three weeks and posted the matter to December 10 for hearing. The petition had challenged the Centre's policy of allocating 2G spectrum and alleged it had caused a loss of crores of rupees to the exchequer. The PIL alleged that the procedure followed by the government was non-transparent, and was intended for the benefit of some private players in the telecom industry. "The telecom ministry's deliberate inaction on the recommendations of the finance ministry, Prime Minister's Office and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has benefited private parties at the expense of public exchequer," individual petitioner Arvind Gupta said. He also referred to an earlier judgement of the High Court delivered in 1993 by which the court had said that "first-come-first-served" policy is unreasonable and unfair. "The basis of first-come-first- served for allotment of time slots on satellite channels is arbitrary. It is unreasonable, unjust and unfair," Gupta said quoting the High Court judgement. He questioned the government's intention of not following a competitive bidding procedure. "The proximity of real estate developers to corridors of the Department of Telecom has enabled even real estate developers to overnight turn into telecom entrepreneurs. Indian real estate developers and infrastructure promoters have also become Indian telcom players," Gupta alleged in his petition.— PTI
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Oil eases further
Singapore, November 12 New York's main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, fell 38 cents to $58.95 a barrel. The drop added to the fall of $3.08 on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday, when the contract closed at $59.33. Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December dropped a further 11 cents to $55.60 a barrel after falling $3.37 to $55.71 in London on Tuesday.—
AFP
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No fuel price cut for now: Deora
New Delhi, November 12 Indian rupee has depreciated 20 per cent against the greenback since April. International crude oil prices have slid from an all-time high of $147 to $ 60 a barrel, but public sector oil companies continue to make losses on sale of diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene.
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Wal-Mart operations from next fiscal
Chandigarh, November 12 Talking to TNS here on the sidelines of a function organised by Punjab government, Raj Jain, managing director and CEO, Bharti- Wal-Mart, said three of the Bharti-Wal-Mart stores are presently under construction at Ludhiana, Amritsar and Jalandhar. “We are committed to starting our retail venture next year. The distribution centre for these stores has already been set up in Banur. At present, this centre is serving the Easy Day stores being run by Bharti Retail in Punjab and Haryana,” he said. Though the Bharti-Wal-Mart retail venture is yet to pick up, Bharti, itself, has gone ahead with its retail biz and 12 of its ‘Easy Day’ stores are already functional. The joint venture between Bharti and Wal-Mart is expected to open 15 wholesale cash-and-carry facilities in the next seven years, which will be open exclusively to business owners and not end-consumers. Each of these stores will be spread over an area of 50,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet. “Though the high realty prices are posing a challenge, the JV is aiming at taking on lease or co-developing the property with owners,” said Jain. He said they had already started enrolling business members in Punjab last week. “Offering the advantage of best fixed and fair prices with unmatched convenience, choice and quality, the stores will be one-stop shop that meet the day-to-day needs of traders, restaurant owners, hoteliers, caterers, fruit and vegetable sellers, kiryana shops, and other retail ventures,” said Jain, adding that focus will be on developing quality and supply chain enterprise with the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Jain was in town to sign an MoU with Punjab government to start a training institute at Amritsar for skilled workers in cash-and-carry business. While the infrastructure for the institute has been provided by the Punjab government, the company will train the workers here, for its own business as well as other cash-and-carry ventures. “We will be employing over 170 persons,” he added.
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Hindalco raises loan for Novelis
Mumbai: Hindalco Industries, headed by Kumaramangalam Birla, has raised a foreign currency loan of $982 million (around Rs 4,640 crore) to repay a bridge loan taken last year as part of fund raising for Novelis, according to a statement put out by the company. The company had raised a bridge loan of $3.3 billion bridge last year to fund the acquisition.—
TNS |
Telenor-Unitech JV rules out 3G services Travel plans on phone Awarded
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The euro zone, Britain, China and South Africa reported data supporting the arrival of a global recession and prompting expectations of further interest rate cuts.
