India's largest refiner, Reliance Industries Ltd, is in talks with public sector oil marketer Hindustan Petroleum Corporation for a tie-up to run the former's fuel retail outlets, closed a year earlier.HPCL has issued a limited tender to five merchant bankers to advise it on the deal.Last year, RIL closed 1,400 petrol pumps -- 900 owned by the company and the rest managed by dealers.
After the rechristening of Telco to Tata Motors in 2003, one of the auto-maker's earliest decision was to settle its high-cost debts of around Rs 500 crore with the proceeds from foreign currency convertible bonds, or FCCBs. The company had raised $100 million and repaid the debt.
Reliance Retail has added 485 stores in the last one year, taking the total count to 950 and the footprint is now spread across 77 cities (58 in the last one year) across India. While his critics say Ambani may have lost the plot as the progress of his retail plans are nowhere near what he had sought to achieve, others feel the Reliance chief is just being pragmatic given the not-so-conducive environment for expansion in retail.
The debt came with covenants, which require borrowers to meet certain conditions such as a mandated debt to EBITDA ratio. A failure to meet the conditions may result in an increase in interest rates. The company reported EBITDA (operating profit) of $69 million in the quarter ended December 31, down from $151 million in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Aban offshore has a Rs 13,000 crore debt on its books and a market cap of only Rs 1,645 crore, down 90 per cent from its peak on May 23 last year. The huge debt is a result of the company, earlier known as Aban Lloyd, buying a 33.7 per cent stake in Sinvest ASA, a Norwegian drilling company, for Rs 5,200 crore. The acquisition gave Aban access to eight premium jack-up rigs with contracts, but it also increased its debt substantially.
A company executive said that the Anil Ambani group is still keen on foraying into television broadcasting business. The top-line of broadcasters was shrinking in the December-ended quarter on the back of economic slowdown and the consequent slowdown in advertising revenues, said the latest Ficci & KPMG report.
The retailer, which runs a supermarket chain under the More brand, is targeting annual sales of $4.5 billion (Rs 22,000 crore or Rs 220 billion) by March 2014 from Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) in the current financial year. The retailer clocked sales of Rs 500 in the previous year. In 2007, the company had talked about a Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) investment plan.
Chevron CEO David O'Reilly told analysts the company has pulled out of some unprofitable refining markets, and will continue to do so. However, he had said that Chevron is continuing talks with its refining joint venture partner RIL that would determine whether it keeps a foothold in Indian refining. Chevron has not yet signed a crude supply and product off-take agreement with RIL to take forward its plans to increase its stake in RPL beyond the existing 5 per cent.
The Reserve Bank of India is formulating guidelines that would allow government-owned banks get into the private equity business.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, on Wednesday made it compulsory for promoters of listed companies to disclose the details of their pledged shares, but clarified that there would be no need to disclose pledged shares of the holding company. Legal and accountancy experts say this may lead to a restructuring of the shareholding pattern in many companies.
Falling oil rates have made rigs available for hire at a cheaper rate. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation planned to foray into building rigs in June 2008 owing to its short supply as crude oil prices zoomed northwards.
Tata Motors, which is announcing its results January 30, is likely to end 2008-09 with around Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) less cash mainly because sales of commercial vehicles, which account for about 60 per cent of its revenues, have dropped sharply.
The company is still short of over Rs 4500 crore (Rs 45 billion) to refinance the debt which is due before June 2 this year. The company had planned to raise the fund for refinancing through three routes. It planned to raise about Rs 4200 crore through rights issues which it managed after the issue devolved on underwriters in October as the stock prices were tumbling globally following the economic crisis.
While the Tatas are looking for PE deals of about $50 million or less, the A V Birla Group is eyeing deals worth not more than $25 million. Tata Capital is banking on its ability to source deals by exploiting the existing Tata ecosystem of suppliers and customers. The Birla group, which has committed 40 per cent of the $250-million corpus it planned to raise for its PE fund, is looking to leverage its strength to source and evaluate deals.
This follows a letter written by eight US Congressmen to that country's Export-Import Bank (Exim Bank) asking it to immediately suspend all financial assistance to RIL until the company agrees to stop selling gasoline to Iran.
Tata Power Company, the largest private sector power player in the country, plans to divest part of its stake in group companies Tata Teleservices and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) to raise about Rs 2,000 crore for funding its ongoing projects, said informed sources.
The freight rate for the very large crude carriers in the spot market has declined to an average $46,426 a day for the quarter ending December 31, about 21 per cent lower than the corresponding period of the previous year. In the same period, smaller crude carriers such as Suezmax rose by about 9 per cent to an average of $42,801 a day. Freight rate for Aframax, a carrier smaller than Suezmax, rose by 25 per cent to an average of $28,628 a day.
After signing the agreement documents on Tuesday night, the Shishir and Rahul Bajaj factions submitted the consent terms of the settlement to the Company Law Board on Wednesday and withdrew the petition.
The Bajaj family dispute is set to end, finally. Shishir Bajaj today sold his 25 per cent holding in the primary group investment firm Bajaj Sevashram to his brother Rahul Bajaj in an off-market deal. This was after Rahul Bajaj transferred his group's entire 29.62 per cent shareholding in Bajaj Hindusthan.
The Wadia group is looking to renegotiate the price of Groupe Danone's stake in Britannia Industries following the market slump and the credit squeeze in the global markets.
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