Five Indian metals and mining companies are in the race for acquiring mining rights for the largest iron ore deposit in war-torn Afghanistan. The government has shortlisted Vedanta group's Sesa Goa, Essar Minerals, Ispat Industries, JSW Steel and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam for a bid for the 1.8 billion tonne Hajigak iron ore deposit.
Aditya Birla group flagship firm Hindalco Industries has decided to trim its overseas operations and is restructuring its capital expenditure in India in an effort to stabilise operations. As part of this overall plan, Novelis, which Hindalco acquired for $6 billion in 2007, is closing its sheet mill at Rogerstone in the UK, involving 440 job losses.
The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group company hasn't yet got the contract for executing the second phase of the Mumbai Metro, but Jalan's team has already started negotiating with domestic banks to tie up funds for the estimated Rs 11,000-crore (Rs 110-billion) project.
The Bombay high court, while pronouncing the verdict on the gas dispute on Monday, advised the Ambani brothers for the second time to settle their row in consultation with their mother.
In what could be one of the largest outsourcing deals in the Indian telecom space, Reliance Communications is close to awarding a $500-600 million (Rs 2,500-3,000 crore) operations and maintenance contract to Foprench telecom infrastructure provider Alactel-Lucent.
While a number of players invested more in Indian companies, another set exited the market, making profits after March. The companies that invested included Saif Partners, which made a $24 million investment in Network18, and Times Private Treaties, which acquired 12 per cent in Jiny & Jony (for an undisclosed sum), according to data with analysts and brokerage firms.
The world's fifth largest wind turbine maker, Suzlon Energy, which has been grappling with quality issues with its rotor blades in the US and struggling to repay debt, finds itself in rough weather yet again -- this time in its home turf near Pune.
The Tata group is strengthening the management super-structure within its group companies by extending the post of vice-chairman to three more companies - Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Tata Consultancy Services.
The company is likely to increase buy-back offer from Rs 351 to Rs 425-450. The open offer price is likely to be revised from the earlier Rs 351 to between Rs 425 and Rs 450, as the current share prices of Novartis India are above the present open offer price, the sources added.
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.
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.
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.
GSK India, which has a turnover of Rs 1,751 crore (Rs 17.51 billion) and launched a cervical cancer drug, Cervarix, and breast cancer drug, Tykerb, last year, plans to launch Promacta, the first oral medication to increase platelet production for people with serious blood disorder, from its parent stable during the current year. Promacta is a relatively new drug, for which approval was given by the US Food and Drug Administration in November last year.
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 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.
"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."
Mukesh Ambani's privately held biotech research company, Reliance Life Sciences, will soon diversify to take up biofuel production in a major way. Industry sources said the facilities might require an investment of Rs 150-200 crore (Rs 1.5 billion to Rs 2 billion). One hectare of land yields about a tonne of crop, so RLS will need to cultivate about one lakh hectares of land, they say. The majority of investments go into sourcing raw material, they say.
Part of government strategy to push demand.
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.
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