Mumbai, August 7
Hitting back at Anil Ambani for his personal and "orchestrated" comments against it and its chairman Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries today asked the younger Ambani to exercise restraint and let a gas dispute between them be decided by the Supreme Court.

"During the course of his media campaign, Anil Ambani has made several personal comments about his elder brother and RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani. While Mukesh Ambani is profoundly saddened by his brother's remarks, he requests the media to respect his decision not to respond," RIL said in a statement.

Fighting inside and outside the courts for getting gas at a committed price of $2.34 per mmBtu from RIL, Anil has levelled several serious charges, including that Petroleum Ministry was conniving with RIL to help it earn a profit of Rs 50,000 crore and that Mukesh had ruled out any role for mother Kokilaben for settling their dispute.

Emphatically refuting and outrightly rejecting "the baseless, tendentious and motivated allegations and insinuations" made by Anil and his associates, RIL said the public statements were attempts to convert "legal issues into public issues."

The public spat between the two brothers and their group companies comes ahead of the September 1 hearing at the Supreme Court on their cross appeals on the decision by the Bombay High Court that RIL should supply 28 mmscmd gas to RNRL for 17 years and the two sides should sign an appropriate agreement for it.

Anil's statements "are a part of an orchestrated campaign to bring into public debate and prejudge the issues that are pending before the Supreme Court," RIL said, emphasising that its legal advisers had asked it to refrain from commenting on issues being adjudicated by the Supreme Court.

"As such, we shall continue to exercise restraint in the face of Anil Ambani's provocative public statements. We hope that Anil and his associates will also exercise similar restraint and leave the matter to be decided by the Supreme Court," the RIL statement said. "We would like to assure the people of India, the Government of India, Members of Parliament and all our shareholders that our objective, is to act at all times in a manner that is fully in consonance with our respect for the law of the land and is protective of the nation's interests. — PTI 

New Delhi, August 7
A two-day strike by public sector bank employees demanding higher salaries ended today after nearly crippling business and retail transactions, but bankers were still unhappy with a 17.5 per cent wage hike offered by the management.

During a conciliatory meeting the union leaders had with the Indian Banks' Association in the presence of the Chief Labour Commissioner, it was decided that they would soon hold bilateral talks on wage hike.

The IBA had earlier agreed to give an average 17.5 per cent hike to banking employees, but later pruned it to 13 per cent. At today's meeting, they were offered the original 17.5 per cent hike, but United Forum of Bank Union's convener C H Venkatachalam said this is not acceptable as of now.

The strike that began yesterday nearly brought to a halt all bulk cash withdrawals, money market transactions, forex operations and letter of credit and cheque clearances, besides hitting retail transactions, including ATM operations and loan sanctions.

Although large private banks and foreign banks operated as usual, the relief was much too little for comfort as the 26 state-run banks account for over 70 per cent of all banking operations.— PTI

Chandigarh, August 7
The country’s largest pharmaceuticals firm, Ranbaxy Laboratories, has secured the Himachal Pradesh government’s nod to set up a new drug manufacturing unit near Nalagarh in Solan district. The new facility, meant to raise the firm’s domestic market capacity, is expected to go on stream by January 2010. The company’s existing plant in the state is located in Paonta in Sirmour district.

According to sources, Ranbaxy plans to invest Rs 33.96 crore in the new unit. The company’s Rs 265 crore unit coming up in the Mohali pharma SEZ is meant for exports.

Himachal industries commissioner Manoj Kumar told The Tribune the project has been given ‘single window’ clearance. He said the plant is expected to generate 202 jobs. The company has already purchased 50.1 acres of land in Bhatolikalan village (district Solan) for the facility.

The sources further said other manufacturing facilities of the company are located in Dewas (MP), New Delhi, Jejuri (Maharashtra), Goa and Toansa (Ropar district, Punjab). The Paonta and Dewas plants are under the regulatory scrutiny of the US Food & Drugs Administration and their products are not allowed to be marketed in the United States.

The company’s net profit for the quarter ended June 30, 2009 jumped 28-fold to Rs 675.45 crore as compared to Rs 23.73 crore in the year-ago period. Total sales in Q2, however, fell 12.9% to Rs 1,121.59 crore (R 1,288.99 crore).

New Delhi, August 7
Faced with a Rs 60,000 crore debt, Air India is in talks with the government for equity infusion and a soft loan even as it began a major cost-cutting exercise, which includes the launch of a low-cost domestic service this September.

Aiming at a turnaround in the next 2-3 years with initiatives like starting Special Business Units in areas like maintenance, repair and overhaul, cargo and groundhandling, Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav said the company was negotiating with banks and financial institutions to turn its high-cost debt of Rs 10,000-11,000 crore into low-cost.

However, the banks want the national carrier to get a comfort letter or a sovereign guarantee from the government to convert the high-cost debt into low-interest loans, he said.

"We have never written to the government for a bailout package ... we have never talked of waiver of ATF charges, waiver of taxes, waiver of penalties," he told reporters here.

"The airline had made a presentation to the government on the need for equity infusion and soft loan and the government is carrying out a financial analysis," Jadhav said.

Air India Express, the national carrier's low cost entity, will commence domestic operations from September with 27 per cent of Air India's existing routes that were not profitable, he said, adding ten additional aircraft would be deployed for this purpose.

Noting that current market pressures would continue over the next two-three years, Jadhav said AI would start preparing for an initial public offering in 2010-11 as well as additional fund offering in the next fiscal.

He said the national carrier was estimating an earning of Rs 180-200 crore through its low-cost operations on the domestic sector, which would "improve our bottomline".

Air India would gradually shift 70-75 per cent of its existing domestic operations to Air India Express, he said.

The airline will focus on high-density domestic and international routes and operate an "aggressive" route restructuring to provide seamless connectivity, he said.

A cost management and audit team has been set up to look at AI's overall financial restructuring, including debt servicing, risk management, hedging and other related issues.

To questions on manpower rationalisation, he said the creation of SBUs relating to engineering, MRO and ground handling would lead to almost two-thirds of the 32,000 staff going out of airline operations, thus lowering the aircraft-to-employee ratio to match global standards. — PTI

Chandigarh, August 7
The Delhi Stock Exchange (DSE), which has been defunct since 2002, will resume operations by October. The exchange has now launched a membership drive to enrol new members, besides upgrading its technology infrastructure.

The exchange foresees a trading volume of Rs 500 crore in the first three months (by December 2009) and a trading volume of Rs 1,000 crore by March 2010. Talking to TNS here today, HS Sidhu, executive director and CEO of DSE, said that they were also in talks to rope in regional stock exchanges as members. “The process of enrolling the stock exchanges at Ludhiana, Ahemdabad and Jaipur is already underway, and we are in talks with other regional stock exchanges at Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Kanpur,” he said.

Sidhu said they have already had meetings with companies listed on other regional stock exchanges. “Subject to no objection from their respective exchanges, these companies can trade on the DSE. We are also looking to negotiate with companies that are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange, but do not trade actively on these exchanges," he said.

He said initially they were looking at 1,000 companies from their own exchange and another 1,000 from other regional exchanges to start trading on the DSE. “Once the trading begins, we will rope in another 500 firms from major exchanges to trade here,” he said.

“We will be offering subsidiary membership for the BSE and NSE to those who become members of the DSE,” he said.

Since DSE had earlier closed operations because of negligible volumes in trading, Sidhu said all measures were now being taken to ensure good volumes of trade. “We introduced an amnesty scheme to revive dead scrips of the exchange, and have got response from 300 companies.

We have already realised Rs 1.70 crore under this scheme. We have also reduced our listing fees and are in talks to list micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). We will soon launch derivatives and hope to reach trading volume of Rs 3,000 crore in the next three years,” he said.

Banawala (Mansa), August 7
Sheep and cattle graze on the land which was transferred about a year ago to a private company for constructing the ultra-modern 1,980 MW Talwandi Sabo Thermal Power Project.

The Vedanta Group, which was assigned construction of the Rs 9,000-crore power project, has yet to built a compound wall on the nearly 2,000-acre land that was acquired for this purpose. Except constructing boundary pillars for barbed wire fencing and a small office shed, nothing has come up during the past one year.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had, with much fanfare, laid foundation stone of the project on September 2, 2008, before the Lok Sabha elections. Work on the project was supposed to begin within a year, but so far there was no sign of any development here.

A top engineer of the PSEB is learnt to have visited here a few days ago to assess the progress of the project, but found that the boundary wall had been constructed on a short stretch.

Mohinder Singh, resident of the nearby village, said the villagers were eagerly waiting for the work to begin. Badal had announced during the foundation laying ceremony that work would begin soon and youth of the area would get job opportunities in this project, he recalled.

Engineers of the PSEB admitted that the company was moving slow on the project. This might be because of the worldwide financial meltdown, they wonder.

Shortly before the Lok Sabha elections, Badal had announced construction of four mega thermal projects to make Punjab power surplus.

Sources said formalities for financial closure for constructing the project were still progressing and the company was shortly expected to work on the equipment procurement contract.

The company has been promised more incentives in case the project was commissioned within three years.