Business

Mumbai, August 04: The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex was down by 93 points on Tuesday as market participants booked profits because of concerns about the weak monsoon.

The Sensex, which had gained 750.77 points in the last three sessions, fell by 93.25 points at 15,830.98, after touching 16,000 in the early part of the day. The key index had surged to a 14-month high yesterday.

Similarly, the 50-share National Stock Exchange index Nifty lost 30.90 points at 4,680.50 after touching the day’s high of 4,731.45 and a low of 4,642.60 points.

New Delhi, August 04: Reliance Industries’ gas sales from its eastern offshore fields have risen to 35 million cubic metres a day, the highest since the nation’s most prolific fields started producing in April.

RIL now has the capacity to produce 60 mmscmd but is constrained to produce less as the government is yet to identify customers beyond the initial 40 mmscmd that had been allocated primarily to fertiliser and power producers in accordance with the Gas Utilisation Policy.

New Delhi, August 04: JSW Steel, the country’s largest private sector steel maker by capacity, today said its production rose 51 percent to 5.02 lakh tonnes in July on robust demand from consumers like the automobile sector, construction and white goods.

The company said crude steel production for July was the highest monthly output in the segment. In the same period last year, the company’s steel production stood at 3.33 lakh tonnes, JSW Steel said in a statement.

Shanghai, August 04: China’s banking regulator is considering tighter rules on domestic banks’ derivative operations after some companies and lenders suffered heavy losses last year, local media said Tuesday.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission is studying plans to discourage lenders from trading complicated overseas derivative products, the China Business News reported, citing unnamed sources.

It may also ban domestic banks from taking part in complex derivatives transactions between domestic companies and overseas institutions, one of the sources told the newspaper.

Atlantic City, August 04: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: It’s Donald Trump. The real estate mogul and reality TV star, his daughter Ivanka, and Dallas-based Beal Bank successfully fought off competition from bondholders in bankruptcy court to purchase the Atlantic City casino company he once ran and that has always borne his name.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. chose Donald Trump’s USD 100 million cash offer late Monday night. The Trumps and an affiliate of Beal Bank Nevada will take the company private.

The deal still must be approved by a bankruptcy judge.

Washington, August 04: Top US bank regulators will speak out on Tuesday against some key elements of the Obama administration’s plan to reshape financial regulation, saying parts of it were unneeded or could be disruptive.

The officials’ defiance, in prepared congressional testimony obtained by media, came despite a warning given to them on Friday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Melbourne, August 04: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) will acquire certain businesses of RBS in Asia for an estimated USD 550 million, as part of efforts to expand its presence in the region.

ANZ would buy Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS’s) retail, wealth and commercial businesses in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Further, the entity would acquire the institutional businesses of RBS in Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam, ANZ said in a statement today.

New Delhi, August 04: The government may raise the number of job days under the NREGA scheme to compensate rural households for loss of income due to a poor monsoon in large part of the country.

“We have to see whether the 100 days limit (of employment days under NREGA) is adequate. If it is not adequate, we can increase it temporarily,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said.

New Delhi, August 04: The Steel Ministry has approved the sale of 8.38 percent of government equity in the blue chip company NMDC that could fetch the exchequer around Rs 12,000 crore.

“We have approved the 8.38 per cent disinvestment of government’s stake in NMDC. We will be sending the proposal to the Disinvestment Department in a day or two (for initiating the process of equity sale),” Steel Secretary P K Rastogi told reporters.

The country’s largest iron ore mining company is one of the most valued Indian firms with a market cap of Rs 1,46,297 crore.

New Delhi, August 04: The government on Tuesday said that there was no plan of retrenchment and early retirement scheme for the employees working in the civil aviation sector.

“There are approximately 52,042 employees working in the civil aviation sector in the attached/autonomous/public sector organisations under this ministry. There are no such proposals in the above organisations,” Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Civil Aviation, Praful Patel informed the Rajya Sabha.

New Delhi, August 04: The government has extended by two months the last date of bidding for the nation’s largest ever auction of oil and gas blocks to October 12, an official said.

A revised timetable has been drawn after finance minister Pranab Mukherjee extended the 7-year income tax holiday to natural gas production.

The first of the promotional roadshows for 70 blocks offered under the eighth edition of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) and 10 coal bed methane (CBM) areas will be held in Mumbai on August 8, a Petroleum Ministry official said.

Tokyo, August 04: Toyota reports a 77.8 billion yen ($819 million) loss for the fiscal first quarter as global sales plunged and a strong yen reduced the value of its overseas earnings.

But the world’s top automaker trimmed its loss forecast for the full fiscal year through March 2010 Tuesday to 450 billion yen ($4.7 billion), better than the 550 billion yen ($5.8 billion) it had initially projected.

Toyota Motor Corp.’s red ink for the April-June period was smaller than expected, underlining the success of cost cuts.

London, August 04: British students completing their business and finance related courses are keen to gain work experience in companies based in India, according to the UK-India Business Council.

Ten British students from various universities have begun their work experience with Indian companies on winning the UK-India Business Council (UKIBC) Scholarship scheme 2009.

Banglore, August 04: Infosys BPO, the back-office services arm of India’s Infosys Technologies Ltd, said on Tuesday it had won a 5-year outsourcing deal from mobile operator T-Mobile UK.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

–Agencies

Mumbai, August 04: A key index of the Indian equities markets slipped into the red soon after opening higher Tuesday and was ruling 54 points down, about five minutes into trading.

The sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) opened higher at 15,940.10 points, as against Monday’s close at 15,924.23 points. But it soon slipped to 15,869.66 points, 54.57 points or 0.34 percent down.

The broader S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was also ruling in the negative terrain at 4,692.05 points, a fall of 0.41 percent.

Mumbai, August 04: The benchmark Sensex today lost over 109 points in early volatile trade, after breaching the 16,000-point mark for the first time since June 2 last year at the outset.

The BSE-30 share index, which had crossed 16,000-point mark to touch a high of 16,002.46 points in opening trade, plunged into the negative terrain to trade 109.28 points down at 15,814.95 as foreign funds and retail investors preferred to book profits at the prevailing higher levels.

The Sensex had gained over 750 points, or 4.96 per cent, in the past three sessions

New Delhi, August 04: Tata Motors has delivered 2,475 units of its small car Nano, billed as the world’s cheapest four-wheels, within 15 days of its commercial roll-out.

Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata had handed over the first Nano on July 17 to Ashok Raghunath Vichare, a resident of Mumbai.

The vehicle carries an ex-factory price of Rs 1 lakh for the base variant and costs anything up to Rs 1,75,000 depending on the model.

Washington, August 04: The Bank of America agreed to pay US regulators a $33-million fine for misleading its investors about billions of dollars in bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives when it acquired the investment bank.

While seeking stockholder approval of the deal to acquire Merrill Lynch, the Bank of America said that Merrill would not pay year-end bonuses to its executives, the Securities and Exchange Commission said. But the bank had actually already reached a deal with Merrill Lynch that allowed it to pay $5.8 billion in bonuses.

Mumbai, August 03: With less than a month left for Supreme Court to take up the gas dispute case between Mukesh and Anil Ambani and the government, the feud intensified on Monday.

Anil blamed his elder brother’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) for delays in his group’s proposed 8,000 mw gas-based power plant at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. He also alleged that RIL was deliberately keeping gas output from its D6 gas block in Krishna Godavari (KG) basin down low to keep prices high.

Coimbatore, August 03: Elgi Equipments Ltd, a leadingmanufacturers of air compressors and automotive equipment,posted net profit of Rs 11.1 crore for the first quarter of2009-10, compared to rs.9.6 crore in the year ago period.

Even though for the period ended June 2009, sale wasmarginally lower at rs.130.7 crore as against rs.131.5crore in 2008-09, focus on cost control measures resulted inhigher profits, Dr Jairam Varadaraj, the company ManagingDirector, said in a release here today.

New Delhi, August 03: Passenger car major Hyundai Motor India Monday said its domestic sales jumped 54 percent to 23,193 units last month as against 15,066 units in July 2008.
The company reported 6 percent rise in exports in July to 22,350 units from 21,086 vehicles in the year-ago period.

The total sales stood at 45,543 units last month, up from 36,152 a year earlier.

Mumbai, August 03: The key indices on the BSE and NSEtoday rose to their highest levels in more than a year onencouraging corporate results.

In the last 30 minutes of trading, the 30-BSE Sensexsurged by 253.92 at 15,924.23, after hitting the day’s high of15,963.36. Similarly, the 50-stock Nifty shot up to 4,723.75,before ending with a gain of 74.95 to 4,711.40.

Both the indices zoomed to levels last seen on June 3last year, as funds and general investors bought blue-chipstocks led by the auto and metal sectors.

Tehran, August 03: Tehran Stock Exchange will witness its biggest deal in its history as Iran’s telecommunications company plans to float $5.15 billion of its shares for sale.

The company announced that it will offer 51 percent of its stake to private investors to become the biggest Iranian company to be privatized.

An IRNA report says foreign investors also could buy the shares only “in partnership with an Iranian consortium”.

New Delhi, August 03: Accused of adopting a biased stand in the Ambani brothers’ gas dispute, Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on Monday clarified the government’s stand on the issue in the Lok Sabha.

Responding to the charges made by Anil Ambani of favouring Mukesh Ambani-led RIL, Deora said that the government is not partisan and added oil and gas is a national asset.

London, August 03: A disastrous energy crunch is looming because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading economist warned Monday.

Fatih Birol, chief economist with Paris-based International Energy Agency, said such an “oil crunch” within the next five years could jeopardise recovery from the global recession.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could derail the recovery, Birol said in an interview with The Independent newspaper.