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Vodafone Plc announced that Piramal Healthcare, Ajay Piramal’s group flagship, will pay $640 million or about Rs 2,900 crore to acquire a 5.5% stake in Vodafone Essar. This will help raise cash for Vodafone as well as allow it to remain compliant with India’s foreign direct investment rules for the telecom sector, which mandate a 74% foreign shareholding cap.
Continue ReadingHydro-power company NHPC’s revenues rose by 40% to Rs 1,431 crore during the June quarter (Q1), but this growth was chiefly due to prior-period revenues. Finalisation of tariff for earlier years led to Rs 275 crore being added to revenues in this quarter. Excluding that, growth would have been a more sedate 13.7%.
Continue ReadingIpca Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, has acquired UK-based Onyx Scientific (Onyx), by buying out the holding company Onyx Research Chemicals. The move adds to Ipca’s contract manufacturing business, for which it has set up a separate division called Covenance. No financial details have been disclosed.
Continue ReadingNapo Pharmaceuticals Inc, the innovator company behind anti-diarrhoea drug crofelemer, is finding itself in litigation with its partners. The company owns crofelemer, a novel anti-diarrhoeal drug under development, which is in advanced stages in the clinial trial process and is widely anicipated to hit the market.
Continue ReadingPranab Mukherjee, finance minister, spoke to a gathering of industrialists on Saturday at the National Conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry, assuring them that the government had no intention of adopting regressive policy measures. He said that dual pricing for diesel is not on the cards and neither is the government planning any fresh tax hikes.
Continue ReadingStore One Retail India announced a loss of Rs 8.6 crore for the June quarter (Q1) and appears to have got tired of waiting for its retail business to turn profitable. Its loss comes on the back of a Rs 35 crore loss in 2010-11 and a loss of Rs 51.2 crore in the year before that.
The company operates retail stores in Nagpur and Pune which are multi-brand outlets, selling apparel and accessories. In 2010-11, its turnover was Rs 3.2 crore.
Continue ReadingGreat Eastern Shipping Co.’s operations in the June 2011 quarter (Q1) were affected by a slump in the global shipping market. Margins suffered as revenues grew at a lower rate than costs did.
Net profit (after minority interests) fell by 5.4%, despite higher other income and lower interest costs, which were offset by depreciation and a higher tax incidence.
Continue ReadingFinancial Technologies (India) scored a key victory in its battle with the National Stock Exchange, its second one after it earlier got a favourable order from the Competition Commission of India. The company today announced a settlement of a case it had filed against the National Stock Exchange of India in the Bombay High Court.
Continue ReadingBEML, a state-owned company which makes heavy equipment used in mining and infrastructure projects, announced that it has entered the Thai market. It has appointed a distributor Paragon Machinery as its distributor in the country and Paragon will market BEML products –such as loaders, excavators, dump trucks, and dozers in Thailand and neighbouring countries such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.
Continue ReadingHinduja Global Solutions, a business process outsourcing company with Rs 1,070 crore revenues in 2010-11, has acquired On-Line Support Inc, a Canadian outsourcing company. It will pay Canadian $74.85 million dollars or about Rs 350 crore to acquire On-Line, giving it a business with about Rs 295 crore in revenues in 2010-11. This is a significant acquisition for Hinduja Global, as this acquisition would have added about 28% to its revenues in 2010-11, notionally speaking.
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