Economy

By IANS, New Delhi : Defending the acquisition of Imperial Energy, the state-run oil producer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has said the British energy major's potential was "very good". ONGC recently managed to get approval from 97 percent of the shareholders of Imperial Energy for its offer for acquisition at $1.89 billion (or 12.50 pounds per share). The Leeds-based Imperial Energy has hydrocarbon assets in Russia and Kazakhstan, especially several blocks in western Siberia.

By IANS, New Delhi : Information Technology and Communications Minister A. Raja Tuesday said telecom operators willing to use 2G spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz will have to pay additional charges. "The government will fix additional charges for those telecom operators who are willing to subscribe to 2G spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz. These charges will have to be paid on a regular basis and according to the guidelines that will be in place by October end," Raja told reporters on the sidelines of a conference organised by India Post.

By IANS, Dubai: Officials of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China met here to discuss cooperation in the railway sector, WAM news agency reported Saturday. UAE Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) board's executive director Mattar Al Tayer and China Railway Company's chairman Kuwang Young led the discussions. Al Tayer praised the Chinese company for its successful projects in various countries and briefed the delegation about the Dubai Metro Project. He said the RTA is looking for a public-private partnership in the transportation sector.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS Bangalore : With the new international airport set to open March 30 in India's silicon city, domestic and foreign airlines are waiting in the wings to launch new services and increase frequencies from this southern hub to new and existing destinations both in India and abroad. "We are getting a lot of enquiries from leading carriers operating in the domestic and international circuits," said Marcel Hunger Buehler, the chief executive for Bangalore International Airport Ltd.

By IANS, Mumbai : Indian equities markets ended with marginal losses Monday after a late afternoon rally with a key index down only 12.09 points or 0.14 percent from its previous close Friday last week. The sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) finished at 8,903.12, down 12.09 points or 0.14 percent from its close Friday previous week at 8,915.21 points. The broader-based 50-share S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), however, finished in the green at 2708.25, up 14.8 points or 0.90 percent from its previous close last Friday at 2,693.45 points.

By IANS, New Delhi : Parsvnath Developers Ltd (PDL) is planning a new luxury mall complex in the heart of Delhi at Connaught Place. The company has acquired a plot at 27, Kasturba Gandhi Marg through a recently formed subsidiary Primetime Realtors Pvt Ltd and is proposing to build luxury shopping and state-of-the-art offices. The development activity would start immediately after obtaining all necessary approvals. The mall will showcase a host of selected major international and Indian luxury brands, across categories such as apparel, jewellery, accessories, home and electronics.

By IANS, Hyderabad : Sleuths of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Andhra Pradesh police Saturday grilled disgraced former Satyam Computer Services chairman B. Ramalinga Raju and his brother and former company managing director B. Rama Raju in connection with a Rs.70 billion (1.43 billion) fraud in the company. Inspector General of Police (Economic Offences Wing) V.S.K. Kaumudi and other CID officials interrogated them throughout the night, police sources said here Saturday.

By IANS, New Delhi : Indian auto major Mahindra and Mahindra Tuesday unveiled new micro-hybrid equipped variants of its Bolero and Scorpio line-up. Micro-hybrid is a stop/start technology, which enables the car's engine automatically switch off when the vehicle comes to a complete halt in the neutral mode. The engine restarts when the driver steps on the clutch to shift the gear. The technology is aimed towards fuel savings at stoppages at intersections and traffic jams.

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By P.S. Anantharaman, IANS Ahmedabad : Work on building the first phase of the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) - that hopes to create a global financial hub in this western Indian state - is expected to start in June, official sources said. Officials here believe that the conferment of Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status is the first key step taken to build a central business district that could eventually rival globally recognised financial centres such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris and London.

By IANS, Kolkata : Bangalore-based Archidply Industries Ltd (AIL), the flagship company of the Archidply group, has chalked out a Rs.830-million ($19.7 million) expansion plan for this fiscal. "We have chalked out a Rs.830-million expansion plan. We will meet the expenses by taking Rs.330 million as bank loan and the remaining Rs.500 million will be raised through an initial public offering (IPO)," AIL joint managing director Shyam Daga told reporters here Thursday.

By IANS, Bangalore : Infosys Technologies Ltd. posted a net profit of Rs.1,600 crore (Rs.16 billion) for the fourth quarter (Jan-March) of the fiscal 2009-10, registering a marginal decline of 0.9 percent year-on-year (YoY) as per the Indian accounting standard. In a regulatory filing, the IT bellwether Tuesday said its consolidated income for the quarter under review (Q4) grew by 5.5 percent YoY to Rs.5,944 crore (Rs.59.44 billion) from Rs.5,635 crore (Rs.56.35 billion) a year ago under the Indian accounting standard.

By IANS, Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh) : Chairman and CEO of the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority Lalit Srivastava was Thursday removed from the CEO's post Thursday following the death of five people in violence over the acquisition of farmers' land by the government, officials said. Srivastava, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, will continue to be chairman, while Pankaj Agarwal, another IAS officer who was principal secretary (planning) at the state capital Lucknow, will take over as CEO of the region's governing body.

By IANS, Mumbai : Indian equities markets continued to be on an uptrend Thursday afternoon, with a key index trading 206 points higher than its previous close nearly 70 minutes before the closing bell. The 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 14,112.04 points, was ruling 206 points or 1.46 percent higher at 14,316.22 points. Similarly, the S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), gained 1.02 percent from its previous close and was trading at 4,319.65 points.

By IANS, New Delhi : The government Thursday said 233 state-run firms had violated the Companies Act by not appointing a whole-time company secretary. "Every company having a paid-up share capital of Rs.5 crore or more is required to appoint a whole-time company secretary," Minister for Corporate Affairs Salman Khurshid told the Lok Sabha. "Normally, PSUs (public sector undertakings) are unable to appoint company secretary due to their financial position and non-availability of suitable company secretaries," the minister said in a written reply.

By DPA, Washington : The US central bank has agreed to bail out the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) with a $85-billion loan in an unprecedented move aimed at propping up a company with worldwide tentacles in the finance industry. Fearing a possible second major Wall Street bankruptcy this week, the Federal Reserve Board engineered an AIG rescue through a two-year loan that gives the government a stake of 79.9 percent in the conglomerate.

By NNN-Bernama, Melbourne : ANZ National Bank, one of Australia's top financial services groups, has announced it is to move 500 New Zealand jobs to Bangalore, India. ANZ National chief executive officer Graham Hodges says no New Zealand staff members would lose their jobs, however.

By IANS, Chennai : Strategic sourcing and value engineering in production have helped Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd's (BHEL) boiler auxiliaries division at Ranipet near here to cut cost substantially and increase profit. "Between September - November 2009, the steel prices went down and we bought our annual requirement then. We sourced steel at Rs.26,000-Rs.28,000 per tonne. Our annual steel requirement is around 200,000 tonne. The current steel price ranges between Rs.36,000 - Rs.38,000 per tonne," A. Chandrababu, the unit's general manager, told IANS Monday.

By DPA Singapore : The world's biggest commercial jetliner, the Airbus A380, underwent final scrutiny Wednesday, a day before passengers seeking a niche in aviation history take the maiden flight. With the Singapore Airlines double-decker scheduled to take to the skies early Thursday bound for Sydney, cooks, engineers and other staff made sure the jet was in "good order", a spokesman said.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : As the world economy comes out of a deep global recession, global activity is forecast to expand by about 3 percent in 2010 after contracting by about 1 percent in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections. Though well below the rates achieved before the crisis, these projections in the October 2009 World Economic Outlook (WEO) reflect modest upward revisions to those in the July 2009 WEO Update. The WEO was released Thursday in Istanbul where the IMF-World Bank group is holding its annual meeting this year.

By IANS, Dubai : The Dubai Mall, one of the world's largest malls being developed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based real estate major Emaar Properties, has unveiled what it calls the most sophisticated multimedia systems to be ever installed in a shopping mall. The new feature will take visitors on a visual journey as a combination of dynamic and static images are displayed throughout the mall in a colourful array of shapes, sizes and formats, according to a statement issued by Emaar's retail subsidiary Emaar Malls. The new mall is set to open Oct 30 this year.

New Delhi: India's economic growth is likely to accelerate to six percent in the current financial year from below five percent expansion registered in...

By IANS, Kolkata : Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will meet chambers of commerce representatives Aug 19 to discuss issues related to industrialisation in the state, said a chamber president here Saturday. "On Tuesday we are organising a meeting with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss industrial growth of the state and how to make it happen without people being affected," Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry president S. Radhakrishnan told IANS.

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By Sushma Ramachandran, IANS The advertising scenario in the country came into sharp focus with the visit of Martin Sorrell, head of one of the world's largest advertising agencies, WPP. His agency also has a large footprint in India, having bought a stake in the major agencies like Rediffusion DY&R, Grey, and Ogilvy and Mather. During his visit, he made it clear that emerging markets like India and China are becoming increasingly important for multinational giants.

By IANS, Mumbai : Thousands of Mumbaikars will come out on the streets Sunday morning to take part in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM) 2009. So far, the event has attracted over 43,000 entries in various categories for the four-hour test of endurance for the final prize totalling to $250,000 (Rs.1.2 billion), a spokesman for the SCMM said here Saturday afternoon. The race will begin and end near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus - one of the sites targeted by the terrorists in the Nov 26 attacks.

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By DPA, Washington : US stocks dropped by more than one per cent, in the worst two-day slump in six years on concern that Congress would not act fast enough to adopt the government's $700-billion bank rescue plan that the central bank head says is direly needed to avoid a recession. Hardest hit companies included General Motors Corp., department store chain Dillard's Inc. and Regions Financial Corp., which tumbled more than seven percent. Members of the Senate banking committee Tuesday were sceptical over US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan.

By IANS, Chennai: The existing corporate governance norms and structures are good and need no major overhaul, but some fine tuning may be required to make them applicable to unlisted and small and medium enterprises, speakers at a seminar said here Saturday. The speakers also felt that growth and prosperity of a nation depends on the character of its people which in turn depends on the education and value systems inculcated in a person since his childhood.

By Arvind Padmanabhan

IANS

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) Finland-based Konecranes, a leader in lifting devices, has set up an engineering centre in Pune to serve as a global interface for design and other services between its customers and manufacturing facilities.

By IANS, New Delhi : The government Monday said high fiscal deficit was inevitable given the global economic scenario and increasing public expenditure. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his interim budget speech pegged the current fiscal's deficit at 6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), but hoped that it would come down to 5.5 percent in next financial year.

By IANS, New Delhi : The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council Friday lowered India's growth forecast for the current fiscal to 7.1 percent, against its earlier prediction of 7.7 percent, on account of the impact of the global meltdown. The council, headed by economist Suresh Tendulkar, also told a press conference here that it expected the country's gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by 7-7.5 percent during the next fiscal,

New Delhi : The thermal arm of Hindustan Powerprojects (HPPPL) has signed a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement with state-run Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd...

By IANS, Ahmedabad : G.N. Nair, director (finance) of the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), was Monday appointed director of the National Multi-Commodity Exchange (NMCE) representing his organisation. NMCE board of directors at its meeting accepted the resignation of Ajay Khera as the CWC's nominated director. It also approved renewal of Rajnikant Patel, managing director of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), as professional director of NMCE.

By IANS Mumbai : The Indian banking sector has to explore alternate ways of generating income to meet challenges thrown up by the entry of foreign banks in the country, Minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal said here Monday. "Foreign banks have advanced technology, better skilled personnel, better audit and accounting practices and are armed with large capital bases. They are emerging to pose significant challenges to the Indian banking sector," Bansal said at Bancon 2007, the annual bankers' gathering in Mumbai.

By IANS,

By IANS

Mumbai : Indian shares bounced back on buying of blue-chip stocks by Indian investors with a key index rising 1.53 percent Tuesday, its strongest close in the past two weeks.