The company is also mulling to enter the currency futures space through the exchange. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Board of India had issued guidelines for SME exchange, and had set a minimum net worth criteria of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) for entity willing to start it.
mjunction services, one of the largest e-commerce companies promoted by Steel Authority of India and Tata Steel, has shelved its initial public offering plan after Tata Steel indicated it would back the management team for its future expansion plans.
Steel major Tata Steel plans to become a partner in Canada-based New Millennium Capital Corp's $4-billion KeMag property, having iron ore reserves in excess of two billion tonnes.
The survey would take 6-8 months and as part of the concession, Essar would be able to conduct exploratory mining for iron ore, manganese ore, chrome ore or any other available mineral. The area, that Essar has earmarked for exploration, measures 7,851.69 hectares and is one of the larger deposits. The mining concession was granted by departmento nacional de producao mineral, government of Brazil, in response to Essar's application.
Steel prices have come down by around 40 per cent since July this year. At present, prices of hot-rolled coil are ruling at Rs 30,000-32,000 a tonne. Ispat Industries director (finance) Anil Sureka said ex-factory prices of hot rolled coils were even lower.
The project at Salboni was welcomed by people and political parties alike, manifested by festoons welcoming Sajjan Jindal from all parties along the road leading to the site. Jindal complemented the mood at the ceremony with his farmer-friendly speech. "Industry and agriculture go hand-in-hand. My father, O P Jindal, was a farmer and he told all his sons that no wrong must be done to farmers," he said.
At least three steel companies-JSW Steel, Jindal Stainless and Bhushan Steel-have decided to wait for the financial storm to pass before they take up their expansion plans. Ministry may not achieve target to cross 100 MT output by 2012.
Singur divided between those who want Tata back and those who just want their land.
Sources in the West Bengal government's finance department said the state had made budgetary provisions that would run into several hundred crores every year for 20 to 30 years to attract Tata Motors' Nano project to Singur.
The West Bengal government's new compensation package for 'unwilling' farmers in Singur, 40km from Kolkata, might have been praised by Tata Motors, but those involved in land transactions in the area find the offer inadequate.
The protestors' claim was made after the much-anctipated first inspection of the factory site on Wednesday by a committee set up under the aegis of West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi to examine the ways of solving a controversy that had arisen after some farmers had refused compensation for the land acquired for the project.
The surprisingly strong opposition to land acquisition in Singur and earlier events at Nandigram, where local protests forced the government to scrap plans for a chemical hub, have induced investors keen on acquiring land in West Bengal to come up with compensation packages that can only be described as extravagant.
Vendors are ready to pull out of Singur and follow Tata Motors, said some of them, a day after Ratan Tata threatened to do so.
"My life has been full of interesting people", Rama Prasad Goenka tells Business Standard when asked about memories of an era when the open Indian economy was converted into a closed one based on the licence raj by the person whom he openly idolises, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
NMDC Spice International, a proposed 50:50 joint venture between state-owned miner NMDC and Spice Minerals and Metals, a part of the Spice Energy group, is close to acquiring two iron ore deposits in Armenia. The acquisition is likely to entail an investment of $500 million (Rs 2,173 crore).
Led by the record increase in benchmark iron ore prices, steel rates are set to climb steeply from August, immediately after the three-month period during which steel producers had promised the government to hold prices gets over.
Even as Tata Motors is racing against time to get its new Singur plant near Kolkata ready for commercial roll-out of the Nano by October 2008, the company may need an out-of-the-box solution to overcome some delays in the integrated plant and component park structure proposed for the vehicle.
Essar Steel is likely to join the race for Brazilian miner and steelmaker CSN's Nacionale Minerios (Namisa), a fully integrated iron ore company. Sources close to the development said Goldman Sachs has approached Essar with the acquisition proposal and the company was considering it.
By July this year, Corus plans to close the operations of Corus Packaging Plus' Bergen (Norway) unit, which has a capacity of 150,000 tonnes and employs 260 people. Further, it might reduce the capacity of CPP's Trostre Works in South Wales by the year end, which could result in a reduction of 290 positions in operational and functional areas.
Numbers collated by the Business Standard Research Bureau show that in the last three years, leading cement manufacturers have multiplied their nine-month profits manifold and mining and paper companies have more than doubled it.