India's second-largest private ship builder, Bharati Shipyard, which already holds 14.9 per cent stake Great Offshore, has said it will make an open offer to buy an additional 20 per cent. While P C Kapoor, MD, Bharati Shipyard, ruled out any possibility of a hostile takeover bid for Great Offshore, he had earlier said competitors such as Punj Lloyd and ABG Shipyard had shown an interest in buying Great Offshore shares from the open market.
Sunil Mittal's plan to merge his Bharti Airtel - India's biggest mobile-phone operator -with South Africa's MTN, coupled with the company's 3G foray, is likely to put pressure on its balance sheet, as the estimated cash requirement would be Rs 40,475 crore (Rs 404.75 billion) in this fiscal.
Bharti Telecom, the unlisted holding company of Bharti Airtel, may issue fresh equity to the MTN group to give it the 25 per cent economic interest in India's largest mobile service provider.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the company that cancelled a five-year contract of rig supply with Great Offshore on Thursday, is planning to issue a new tender. India's largest oil producer cancelled the contract as Mumbai-based Great Offshore could not supply the rig in time.
A company executive, who did not want to be identified, said the combined debt of RIL and its subsidiary, Reliance Petroleum, which is being merged with it, would be brought down to around Rs 57,000 crore this year from Rs 72,000 crore at present.
Tata Motors, India's largest commercial vehicle maker, is in the process of raising Rs 5,000 crore through a bond issue to refinance the remaining $ 2 billion (Rs 10,000 crore) bridge loan it took to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover.
It will also close 30 unviable stores. The company's move comes after its net loss widened to Rs 141.2 crore in the March-ended quarter, owing to mounting losses in apparels. The loss was Rs 82.2 crore in the apparel business, against a loss of Rs 4.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.
"That plant has a high cost of production and it is not feasible to operate it when aluminium prices have dropped significantly," said a company executive. It has started reducing output and full closure is expected soon. Aluminium prices fell to $1,251 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange from last July's all-time high of $3,271, as the global credit crunch and economic slowdown curbed demand for the base metal. On Wednesday, the metal's LME price was $1,421 a tonne.
Ripples of Indias largest corporate scam along with poor quarterly performance have made more than half of the actively traded companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) opt not to disclose their fourth quarter un-audited results this month. Instead, they would announce only their annual audited results, before the end of June.
EGF, managed by the Capital Group, bought 16.13 million shares, or a 1.02 per cent stake, in RIL from the open market in the March-ended quarter. When share prices were down in the fourth quarter, Life Insurance Corporation added 2.4 million shares of RIL to its kitty, taking its stake to 5.52 per cent. The purchase would have cost LIC over Rs 250 crore. LIC had also bought over six million shares of RIL in the third quarter, at an investment of around Rs 800 crore.
The National Aluminium Company (Nalco), India's second largest producer of the base metal, avoided a production cut by offering discounts to its key clients that helped it boost sales and trim rising inventory.
The takeover battle for United States copper miner Asarco continues to rage, as its estranged parent Grupo Mexico has offered $1.3 billion to counter Sterlite Industries' offer for the second time.
Tech Mahindra, the highest bidder for Satyam Computer Services, has tied up Rs 875 crore funding from mutual funds and insurance companies and is in talks with banks to mobilise Rs 1,000 crore bridge loans.
"The price quoted by L&T (Rs 45.90) in the financial bid is fairly decent, compared with the share price of Satyam in the last three months. The team of (L&T chairman) A M Naik never expected that anybody could quote 10 per cent above their price, as there was no clarity on Satyam's liabilities. Even if somebody had quoted less than 10 per cent of what L&T quoted, the company could have raised the bid in the open bidding round," said a source in L&T.
A company executive said unlike India, the price of petrol changed on a daily basis in the US. "In India, we don't have a level playing field, since the government gives public sector oil marketing companies subsidies. Since the RIL refineries operate on better refining margins, we could earn more revenue from free markets," he said. "We have better understanding beyond a theoretical knowledge about the US and European markets after our long experience in these markets."
Tata Motors, India's largest commercial vehicle maker, has postponed plans for an overseas equity issue and sale of investments to repay the $3 billion bridge loan it took in June last year to acquire the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford.
The first to pass on the baton will be Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant. He retires in June, according to the group's policy that all executive directors must retire at the age of 65 years. The other two are the MD of Tata Steel, B Muthuraman, and his long-time counterpart at TCS, S Ramadorai. They retire in September and October, respectively.
The company had reported less than 1 per cent of the revenue of Rs 781 crore (Rs 7.81 billion) in 2007-08 from the dredging business. For the nine months ending December 31, 2008, it reported revenue of Rs 853 crore (Rs 8.53 billion), a 61.1 per cent growth over the corresponding period of the previous year as it largely deployed its ships on long-term contracts.
Currently, the public sector major has an inventory of 20,000 tonnes as against the usual level of 5,000 tonnes. Analysts expect the inventory to reach 25,000 tonnes by March-end. "We expect aluminium prices to remain below the cost of production for the next six to nine months," said Vipul Shah, an analyst with Mumbai-based brokerage K R Choksey Shares. "The outlook for aluminium is grim," he said.
Part of government strategy to push demand.
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