Andhranews

New Delhi, Aug. 4: SABMiller plc, the world’s second-largest beer manufacturer, on Friday said it will acquire Australian beer maker Foster’s India operations for $120 million (approximately Rs 540 crores).
Subject to needed approvals, the deal will mean that SABMiller will assume ownership of all Foster’s assets in India including the Foster’s brand in the territory.

SABMiller said that it has entered into an agreement to acquire a 100 per cent interest in Foster’s India for a consideration of $120 million. As per the agreement, it is a cash-free and debt free deal. A spokesperson for SABMiller said that for this consideration, the company is basically buying Foster India’s physical assets and the brand and not their debt or cash assets.

“This transaction enhances our existing portfolio in India and provides us with an exciting opportunity to further increase our premium brand offering. The acquisition also supplies much-needed capacity to fuel the strong growth we have experienced so far this year,” SABMiller Africa and Asia managing director, Andre Parker, said.

At present, Foster’s India operates one brewery in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, with an annual capacity of 350,000 hectolitres. “This is an outstanding deal for the Foster’s group, struck with one of our most important long-term partners. While the Foster brand has enjoyed great success in India, the opportunity for us to continue to grow the brand profitably from a small production and distribution base in a challenging market structure was limited,” Foster’s group president and chief executive officer, Trevor O’Hoy, said.

Foster started its operation in India in 1998. It is the third-largest market for the Foster’s brand globally. It has achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 13 per cent since its operations started in India. SABMiller India would extend Foster’s lager nationally through its network of ten breweries and seek significant cost benefits from brewing and distributing the brand locally. The Aurangabad brewery
will also provide additional capacity for SABMiller’s presence in Maharashtra as well as a platform for access to the Mumbai market, said the company.

SABMiller India is the subcontinent’s second-largest brewer, the first one being the UB group. SAB Miller’s brand portfolio includes Royal Challenge, Haywards 5000, Castle and the recently launched Haywards Black, India’s first stout beer.

New Delhi, Aug. 4: Domestic air fares would go up once again across the board from August 8, when major carriers raise fuel surcharge on tickets from Rs 500 to Rs 650 on account of increase in jet fuel prices.

Public sector Indian and private carriers Jet Airways and Air Sahara have anno-unced a hike of Rs 150 on all types of fares in all classes and on all domestic routes. The surcharge would not be applicable on sale of tickets made on or before August 7, but would be applicable if tickets are presented for any voluntary change on or after August 8. For tickets purchased outside India, a surcharge of $14 would be applicable on domestic travel in India.

This is the second consecutive revision in fuel surcharge in the last two months due to the hike in Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) rates when it was raised from Rs 300 to Rs 500. In the last three years, the fares have gone up five times. Low-cost carrier Air Deccan said a decision to hike the surcharge would be taken on Saturday, while SpiceJet said though it was contemplating following suit, it would not do so in the immediate future.

For the fifth month in a row, the public sector oil firms raised jet fuel prices in step with rising international crude oil cost. Meanwhile, Air Deccan and other low-cost carriers have severely cut into the market share of full-service carriers in the first quarter of 2006 and also cornered a large chunk of new air travellers.

While Air Deccan has more than doubled its share from seven per cent last year to 15.2 in the first quarter, others like Kingfisher, SpiceJet, Paramount and GoAir have also eaten into the market pie so far controlled by large carriers like Indian, Jet and Air Sahara.
According to official figures, the market share of Indian declined from 34.7 per cent in 2005 to 23.9 in the first quarter of this year, while that of Jet came down to 34.9 from 44.1 per cent.

Air Sahara’s market share also fell from 14.2 per cent to 9.7 per cent during the same period. Kingfisher, SpiceJet, Par-amount and GoAir, which started their operations last year, registered market shares of 8.3, 6, 0.3 and 1.6 per cent respectively in Q1 of this year.

Mumbai, Aug. 4: Though the markets opened on a strong note, the index could not sustain its strength in mid-after noon trades and finally closed in the red. After opening 17 points higher at 10,940, the Sensex rallied past the 11,000-mark to touch a high of 11,039 on buying in metal, pharma and technology stocks.

The index, however, could not hold gains as weakness in banking stocks soon spread to other counters. Fresh buying towards the close saw the index finally close with a drop of 57 points at 10,867 and NSE Nifty closed at 3176.75, down 13.25 points. Overall, the market breadth was negative. Out of 2,530 stocks, there were 1,067 advances, 1,375 declines and 88 stocks did change on Friday on the BSE.

The BSE mid-cap declined 0.33 per cent, BSE small-cap went down by 0.41per cent, BSE Bankex fell 1.50 per cent, BSE FMCG dropped by 1.57 per cent and BSE Metal dipped 0.13 per cent. SBI shed 2.7 per cent to Rs 808.

Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Karnataka Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank and Vijaya Bank were down 2-4 per cent each.Top gainers on the index include Reliance Energy which inched up 1.86 per cent, HDFC and Bajaj Auto.

Chandigarh, Aug. 4: Jet Airways started direct flights between Punjab and the United Kingdom on Friday. The inaugural flight was flagged off from the Sikh holy city of Amritsar by Punjab’s Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday morning.

Jet Airways plans to operate three weekly flights between Amritsar’s Raja Sansi International Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport. This is the first time that regular, direct passenger services have been started from Punjab and London. Air India has earlier been operating flights between Amritsar and Birmingham.

The thrice a week service is being operated with a brand new leased Airbus A330-200 aircraft on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.The aircraft will be equipped with the Less Paper Cockpit (LPC). Jet Airways is the first operator in India to be approved to use this IPC concept.The direct service to London will be the fourth non-stop flight operated by Jet Airways from India to London’s Heathrow.

The airline already operates two daily flights between Mumbai and London and one daily flight between Delhi and London.The new Amritsar-London service is expected to benefit thousands of UK-based Punjabis, who travel home frequently. The service will also be used by scores of foreign tourists who visit Amritsar’s Golden temple each year.

Raja Sansi International Airport, which is currently under upgradation befitting the “international” status it was granted only a few years ago, is presently used for eighty-two overseas flights operated by various international carriers. Meanwhile, Jet Airways on Friday also unveiled plans to expand its domestic operations in Punjab.

Hyderabad, Aug. 4: The Hyderabad-based Karvy Group on Friday filed a petition with the Securities and Appellate Tribunal seeking the dismissal of the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order freezing two group companies, Karvy Stock Broking Ltd and Karvy Computershare, from getting new business.

“Karvy Stock Broking and Karvy Computershare filed separate petitions with SAT, which admitted both petitions,” sources familiar with the situation said. The sources said that SAT has set September 25 as the date for final argument and disposal of the case. Both the companies had been ordered by Sebi on May 26 to stop pursuing new business, which said that their role in the IPO scandal in December would be probed.

“The Sebi order allowed the two companies to continue with their existing business, and this is going on,” the sources said.The sources, who did not wish to be identified, said that the Karvy group was waiting for the enquiry announced by Sebi in May to begin. “Karvy was expecting the enquiry to begin and conclude speedily, but there appears to be no movement on this,” the sources said.

Hyderabad, Aug. 4: If you thought the ‘buy one and get one free’ and gift vouchers were limited only to shopping malls and the retail industry, think again. Two of India’s leading carmakers, Maruti Udyog Ltd. and Hyundai Motor India have, for the first time in the industry, lined up freebies on their cars.

In moves that are largely seen by analysts as marketing ploys and ways to shore up sales numbers in the lean monsoon season, Maruti has kicked-off gift-voucher schemes ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 60,000 on select models. While Hyundai offers one car free to a lucky-dip winner everyday till August 31, plus Rs 3.5 crore worth of gift vouchers.

A senior executive of an auto company said, “The volumes segment which Maruti and Hyundai target is intensely competitive and with not a very exciting July in terms of numbers carmakers want to notch up some numbers before the ‘Shradh’ period next month.”

Maruti reported a 10.1 per cent increase in July sales over the same period the previous year which was less than what its peers in the industry reported. Maruti’s voucher offer, valid till August 15, is being touted by its advertising agency as “a way of thanking customers” for making the company the largest selling car company in the country.

But industry sources say that Maruti has been offering a discount on the price of its cars for the last two months. “Sales on a daily basis have gone up to 35 cars from 15-20 cars earlier. But no gift voucher is being offered. In effect, there is a discount on the price of the car,” says an executive of a car dealership.

That means despite the pressures from high input costs and rising fuel costs, a Maruti-800 costs Rs 10,000 less, Baleno comes Rs 60,000 cheaper and a free Hyundai car, be it Elantra, Tucson or an Accent rolls out everyday. The customer is surely not complaining with one person each in Mumbai and New Delhi winning free Santros.

Another senior official of an automobile major which is not present in the small car segment says, “Most prudent marketing executives have drawn out plans for a lean phase such as August, September and December. Similarly, due to the cyclical nature of sales, things look better during the festival season in October and the beginning of the calendar year.”

In fact, Maruti, industry sources say, is already toying with the idea of extending the freebie period till August 31 after evaluating the response to the offer.

International consultant to help agreement on price structure * Next meet in Tehran

New Delhi, Aug. 4: India, Pakistan and Iran agreed on Friday to try one last time to break the impasse over pricing of gas proposed to be imported by New Delhi and Islamabad through a $7 billion tri-nation pipeline and decided to appoint an international consultant to go into the issue.

After two days of intense negotiations, Iran stuck to its demand for that the price must be linked to crude oil, while the buyers jointly sought a price band with a floor and ceiling.
“The three nations will jointly appoint an international consultant to study the pricing issue,” said Mr Srinivasan after the second round of negotiations of the tripartite secretary-level talks on Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

Informally, it was said that there are only two international consultants of any repute, one based in France and the other in the UK, and the three parties have to choose one of the two.Iranian deputy oil minister M.H. Nejad Hossenian, who along with his delegation and the Pakistani delegation called on Union petroleum minister Murli Deora, told reporters later that as there was no prior standard available with the contending parties to determine the justification of their respective price structures, they decided to leave this to an international consultant, whose report will, however, not be binding on any of the contending parties.

On Thursday, when the three sides failed to arrive at the ideal price structure to buy gas from Iran, they had decided to constitute an expert committee consisting of three experts from each country to deliberate on this issue and suggest the negotiated price.

On Friday, the leaders of the three delegations avoided any mention of this committee, indicating that the committee could not succeed where the leaders of the delegation had failed.

However, government sources said all sides were unanimous on the importance of the project, but “the buyers (India and Pakistan) were offering a price which was half the price the seller (Iran) wanted.” Mr Deora said the consultant would submit its report in 4-5 weeks after which the officials of the three countries would meet again in Tehran. The Iranian minister also said that they are likely to meet “in Tehran within a month.”

But Indian officials, exasperated by Iran’s reluctance to come down, said: “This is the last time we are trying to revive the project.” Meanwhile, Pakistan oil secretary Ahmed Waqar said Pakistan and India were one on the issue and were looking at “a price affordable and reasonable to their domestic markets.

We are pursuing a bilateral (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline and a trilateral (IPI) pipeline parallely. If for any reason, India does not join the IPI project, Pakistan would go ahead with the bilateral project subject to the price being affordable,” he said.

The Iranian minister said Iran and India had alternative markets for sale and source of supplies. While Iran can sell gas to European markets, India has possible gas sources in Turkmenistan and Qatar. “Decisions (by) each side will be taken in their own national interest,” he said.

Mr Deora said India continues to be committed to the pipeline project. Sources said an international consultant was needed because there were substantial differences between buyers and sellers on transportation and gas processing costs.

The tripartite expert committee, failed to resolve differences, with Iran insisting on a transmission cost of $1.2 per million British thermal unit, while India and Pakistan suggested one-fourth of this cost.

Bangalore, Aug. 4: Satyam Computer Services Ltd. expects to grow its headcount substantially in China from the current 300 to a few thousand in the next few years, even as it scouts for acquisitions to enhance its skills in areas it does not have a foothold.

“We consider operations in China to be of strategic importance for us because many of our customers we provide services to currently, also have operations there,” B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of the Hyderabad-based company, said.

“Several thousand people would operate out of China in the next few years,” he added.
The company intends to grow operations in China with a view to serve its clients there and take advantage of the talent pool available in the engineering services, he said adding that a significant portion of the headcount that would be scaled in China would in the engineering services domain.

Mr Raju said the company is pursuing an acquisition strategy, including buyouts overseas, to enhance its skills in areas it is “not necessarily strong in” and “where levels of synergy are higher.” “We are observing that the need to integrate talent at a global level is increasing,” he said. Engineering services have contributed more than 10 per cent in the company’s revenue. “We expect engineering services to grow faster than growth of the company itself,” Mr Raju said.

Mumbai, Aug. 4: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said that Mutual Funds (MF) can invest up to 10 per cent of their net assets with a ceiling of $50 million each in overseas exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

In its guidelines for overseas investments released late on Thursday, the capital market regulator said that MFs with at least 10 years of operations would be allowed to invest in overseas ETFs. The Union Budget for the year 2006-07 permitted qualified MFs to invest cumulatively up to $1 billion in overseas ETFs. The Budget put the limit for investment in all overseas securities at $2 billion.

Moreover, Sebi also said that any MF choosing to invest overseas must appoint a dedicated fund manager. Mutual Funds have been allowed to invest up to $100 million in overseas securities such as Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) of Indian companies, equity of overseas companies and foreign debt securities in countries with fully convertible currencies.

The market regulator further said that the asset management companies (AMCs) in their disclosure documents have to declare their intentions to invest in overseas securities, the risks attached to such investments and the likely benefits to investors.

In the case of ETFs, the experience of the AMC in making such investments also has to be made clear to investors. Moreover, the AMCs also have to disclose the proportion of assets that they would be investing in foreign securities.

Let’s talk about 3G technology for the telecom sector, and what’s cooking in the space. Radvision, which develops a video network infrastructure and developer tools for unified visual communications over IP, 3G, and emerging next-generation networks, says it has developed a new PC-to-Mobile 3G solution.

The solution can apparently transform PCs into mobile handsets by opening a bi-directional channel for visual communication between 3G mobile devices and desktops. “This will enable mobile operators to offer 3G visual communications to subscribers on desktops and laptops as well as on 3G handsets. PC-to-mobile allows operators to immediately increase the critical mass of 3G enabled handsets, encouraging and developing a larger community of 3G users and expanding the boundaries of peer-to-peer visual communications 3G networks,” the company says.

“The PC-to-mobile solution leverages the power of both PCs and 3G mobile devices to fuel 3G proliferation and enable subscribers to use any PC with a broadband Internet connection as an extension of their 3G mobile handsets, subscriptions and accounts.”

The solution offers a new level of 3G service to both enterprise and consumer markets, it says. The generic platform comes with a downloadable, branded client to enable the service on any desktop. “Users are ensured an easy, intuitive visual communications experience from the desktop or 3G mobile device, with features such as dialling using personal contact lists, flexible multiple video layouts and easy session control,” Radvision says.

Certified wireless USB

Moving from 3G network technology to Ultra Wideband (UWB), Wisair, a provider of WiMedia UWB chipset solutions, has launched a a 542 chip, based on Certified Wireless USB from the USB-IF. The new 542 chip, proven in silicon, provides a high-performance wireless solution for PCs and laptops, PC peripherals, and consumer electronics devices such as wireless hubs, external hard drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players.

Wisair says the 542 chip supports multiple Wireless USB modes for host and device-side implementations, including Device Wire Ada-pter, Host Wire Adapter, Native Device and Dual Role Device. Featuring an integrated Wireless USB protocol stack, the 542 chip is implemented with hardware-software partitioning to deliver uncompromising performance and flexibility. It says that it has has further integrated into the 542 chip its Detect and Avoid mitigation technology in order to meet wireless regulatory requirements worldwide, including those from Europe and Japan.

Mumbai, Aug. 4: India’s premier bourse Bombay Stock Exchange is awaiting market regulator Sebi’s nod for offloading 51 per cent stake, in which the likes of Nasdaq and NYSE have shown interest.

The Bombay Stock Exchange will be offloading 26 per cent stake to a strategic partner and the remaining in retail market through an IPO. Kotak Mahindra, the financial advisor for the demutualisation process, has selected eight leading global bourses for the stake sale.

“We are in the process of selecting our strategic partners. We will be completing this procedure by May 2007,” Rajanikant Patel, chief executive officer and MD of BSE said on Friday. Sebi is expected to prescribe criteria for selection of strategic partner and will be announcing these norms soon as the process has to be completed within a span of nine months.

“There exists automatic approval from the Reserve Bank for a foreign partner interested in 26 per cent stake in an Indian financial institution,” he added. Nasdaq president and CEO Robert Greifeld had said during his visit on August 1 that he was in favour of global consolidation of exchanges and had also held a meeting with BSE officials to possibly discuss picking stake in the exchange.

Nasdaq had made a 2.4 billion pound bid for London Stock Exchange. However, the bid was out rightly rejected by LSE, after which Nasdaq hiked its stake to 25.3 per cent, buying LSE’s largest shareholder.

New York, Aug. 4: Global IT giant IBM has acquired privately-held Webify, founded by Indian American Manoj Saxena. Although the financial terms have not been disclosed, IBM has said that around 120 employees of Webify working in Texas and Mumbai would become part of IBM, according to the Silicon India magazine.

The Austin, Texas-based Webify’s programmes help insurance companies, healthcare companies and banks share data among various software systems that otherwise would not be able to communicate with one another. It provides hundreds of industry-specific, pre-built standards-based accelerators, tools and frameworks.

With this acquisition, IBM will expand into the fast-growing market of integrating corporate software systems. The acquisition will help IBM to take advantage of its strengths in business consulting, IT services and software to develop high-value tools that help companies optimise and transform their businesses.

Webify technology will be immediately integrated into IBM Software Group under the WebSphere brand. “What we see here is the creation of a very large market for service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the next three or four years,” Mr Saxena said at a press meet held to announce the acquisition. The merger will help Webify increase its reach to customers around the world.

“From a shared point of view, Webify and IBM have a very similar point of view,” he was quoted as saying. Mr Saxena will continue to manage Webify and will take on additional responsibilities for IBM’s SOA strategy, according to the report.

New Delhi, Aug. 4: Cash crunch during a long rail journey would become a thing of past with the Indian Railways signing an MoU with the largest bank, the State Bank of India, to install ATMs at 681 stations across the country.

These ATMs would provide cash withdrawal and deposit facilities to the passengers. Railway minister Lalu Prasad, finance minister P. Chidambaram and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia were present when the MoU was signed at the Rail Bhawan here.

Mr Prasad also announced that the banks would also provide e-ticketing facility through internet ticketing kiosk at 383 major railway stations in association with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation.

The railway minister said ticket vending machines would also be installed at railway stations. Meanwhile, a vending machine has been installed at Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway station in Mumbai on an experimental basis. Mr Prasad said railways was holding talks with other public sector banks to install ATMs at other railway stations across the country. He said the railway has already received proposals from different banks to install over 1,000 ATMs.