Infosys, Wipro and TCS bag lucrative BP outsourcing deal

Oil major BP handed out a major IT outsourcing contract to five global IT companies. The deal has been awaited for long and comes at a time when deal flow has slowed down for the software sector. While the deal value was not disclosed by the companies who got the award, this story by Mint has quoted a BP spokesperson attributing the deal value at $1.5bn. BP will save about $500mn by reducing its number of vendors to 5, says the report.

Continue Reading

Bharti Airtel and MTN can’t seem to decide

Bharti Airtel and MTN have still not managed to get their merger act together and don’t expect to do so any time soon. They have 10 days to go for the August 31 deadline for exclusive talks to end. But Bharti Airtel today announced an extension of talks till September 30. It is unlikely that the two sides are not able to agree on the price, by now they would have called off the talks if price was a sore point
 

Continue Reading

Indian government to issue C-bills

Short term borrowings are a part of any company’s life. These are needed to tide over temporary cash shortages or even to meet normal working capital needs. Since the needs are temporary, companies do not mind paying a slightly higher rate of interest. But when governments start dipping into the till to meet short term requirements, the consequences can be interesting, if not disruptive.
 

Continue Reading

Sebi bans differential exit loads

Sebi has issued a new circular to all mutual funds, barely a week after its rule banning entry loads came into effect. The capital market regulator has told mutual funds to charge exit loads uniformly to all investors. The move plugs any possibility of mutual funds compensating for the lack of entry loads by recovering expenses from retail investors, when they exit a scheme.
 

Continue Reading

DIL sells drug discovery and development services subsidiary to Evotec AG

DIL is selling a 70% stake in its contract research subsidiary to a European company Evotec AG, headquartered in Germany. DIL was earlier known as Duphar Interfran and it changed its name after its pharmaceutical business was hived off to Solvay. Of its consolidated turnover of Rs 70 crore in 2008-09, bulk drugs/chemicals contributed to over half, while research and development contributed to about a third at Rs 22 crore.
 

Continue Reading