In another bid to mobilise funds for the cash-strapped realty major Unitech, promoter Ramesh Chandra and his family are in talks with leading Indian and global steel giants to sell their 25 per cent stake in Bhubaneswar-headquartered Orissa Sponge Iron & Steel Ltd.Investment banks said the Chandras, who bought the stake sometime in 2006 and 2007, are in talks with Korean steel giant Posco and Delhi-based Bhushan Steel, which owns 6 per cent in the firm.
The government is considering a fresh stimulus of around Rs 20,000 crore for manufacturing companies and non-banking finance companies routed through the Stressed Asset Stabilisation Fund (SASF) Trust that is currently mandated to deal with bad and doubtful debts of IDBI Bank.
The key to last week's revival package, in the infrastructure sector, is the two-year old India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd (IIFCL) and the efforts of its chairman and managing director, Surinder Singh Kohli.
UTI Asset Management Company (UTI AMC), India's oldest mutual fund, is in advanced stages of discussions to divest 26 per cent to a strategic partner.
D B Corp, the owner of the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, is in advanced discussions with broadcaster INX Media to acquire a stake in the company that operates the entertainment channels as well as a majority stake in its English language news channel NewsX. Both companies are promoted by Indrani and Peter Mukerjea, the former Star India CEO.
The government and Reserve Bank of India are working on opening a massive Rs 75,000 crore refinance window to provide concessional funds for infrastructure, housing and small and medium enterprises by partly leveraging the country's foreign exchange reserves.
According to top sources, the government is all prepared to lower the prices of diesel, petrol and cooking gas after the polling is over for the last phase of Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections on December 24. As the global crude prices have dipped to $55 per barrel now, petroleum ministry officials say even a Rs 2 to Rs 3 per litre cut in diesel prices would bring down inflation 60 to 70 basis points (100 basis points is equal to one percentage point).
Unitech Ltd, the country's second largest real estate firm, has decided to sell its 200-room budget hotel Courtyard by Marriott in Gurgaon ahead of its inauguration in January 2009.
Indian Oil raised prices of commercial LPG, sold in 19 kg cylinders, to Rs 1,108.5 per cylinder on Nov 1, from Rs 1,095.24 per cylinder on Oct 1. Commercial LPG is not subsidised and oil companies revise their prices in line with international prices on the first of every month. "Commercial LPG prices are expected to go up in December too," said an IO official. But prices of automobile LPG have come down by around 5.34 per cent on Nov 1 compared with prices on Oct 1.
AS Bindra, the father of ace shooter and Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, has defaulted to banks and financial institutions. The money claimed from Bindra is over Rs 75 crore (Rs 750 million). He had borrowed it in the 1990s to set up a meat processing plant under Punjab Meats Ltd.
These so-called 'negative crack spreads' have huge implications for India, which imports crude oil and exports petroleum products. Brent crude oil, the international oil benchmark, was trading at $62 a barrel on Thursday.
The decision comes after Australian mining major BHP Billiton said it would not improve the terms of its bid. BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, and new entrant GVK Oil and Gas were the sole bidders for five deepwater blocks and hence the provisional winners after the bidding closed on June 30 this year.
Eighteen candidates from state-owned companies have applied for the post of chairman and managing director of the country's largest gas marketer, GAIL India, nine months before the incumbent retires.
After nearly two years, the state-owned oil companies have started making profits on petrol sales, but not diesel or cooking fuel, with the Indian basket of crude oil falling below $60 a barrel on Friday, the last date for which data is available.
The price has been cut 39 per cent to Rs 555.85 from Rs 908 per share originally after its request to redeem the bonds ahead of maturity was rejected by the Reserve Bank of India.
The board of GAIL India, the country's largest transporter and marketer of natural gas, on Wednesday approved a proposal to pick up to 19 per cent stake in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) petrochemical project in Gujarat.
As crude oil prices rose sharply, private companies like Essar Oil and Reliance Industries closed their retail outlets as they found it difficult to compete with state-owned oil companies, which were selling fuel below the production cost with support from the government. While Essar Oil has drawn up plans to re-open its retail outlets, Reliance Industries has decided not to go ahead with the retail plan
With international crude oil prices dipping to last year's levels, the government has put the issue of cutting motor and cooking fuel prices back on the agenda to tame inflation, two senior oil ministry officials have said.
Cairn India, which found India's largest oil field in Rajasthan in over 30 years, has discovered a saline water reservoir near its oil field that will help pump crude oil to the ground level and enhance production.
OVL, along with global oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Total and China National Petroleum Corporation, is one of the 35 companies short-listed by the Iraqi government for the auction, which includes six oil-producing blocks with recoverable reserves of 40 billion barrels of oil, making it the largest such auction in the world.
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