Market Outlook

Economy
·Inflation eased to 0.18 per cent, the lowest ever in the last three decades,
even as prices of food articles like pulses, cereals and vegetable hardened
during the week ended April 4. The wholesale price-based index declined
by 0.08 per cent against 0.26 per cent in the previous week. The decline
was mainly due to higher base effect and falling prices of some
manufactured products. The inflation stood at 7.71 per cent in the same
wee k a year ago.
Oil & Gas
·Reliance Industries (RIL), the country's largest private company, may
reopen its domestic petroleum retail outlets, as the export-oriented unit
status of its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat has been ended.
Telecommunication
·Reliance Communications (RCom), an Anil Ambani group company, has
added around 11.3 million new subscribers in the January-March quarter,
increasing its total subscriber base to 72.6 million by the March end.
·MTNL will launch its 3G services in Mumbai next month, as it targets a user
base of 1,00,000 for the third generation mobile service by year-end.
Banking
·State Bank of India has agreed to lend Vodafone-Essar, the joint venture
between UK's Vodafone and Essar, Rs 10,000 crore to finance the company's
entry into 3G (third generation) telecom services and expansion of its
broadband operations.
Automobile
·Maruti Suzuki is investing Rs 1,200 crore to replace engines of existing
models with a new light-weight fuel-efficient one that will conform to a
new national emission standard to come in place next year.
·Within 15 days of opening the registration process for Nano, its Rs 1 lakh
car, Tata Motors has sold nearly 500,000 application forms, raking in Rs 15
crore (at Rs 300 each). Distributors associated with the Nano bookings said
most of the forms were likely to translate into bookings.
Pharmaceutical
·Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's largest drug maker by sales, may be sitting on
mark-to-market (MTM) losses of over Rs 2,500 crore on foreign currency
derivatives transactions entered into with various banks, according to
estimates by one of its lenders in February this year.
·Lupin Ltd plans to revamp its drug research programme and foray into novel
biotech and reverse engineering of biotech drugs (or biosimilars). The
move comes after the company's earlier development efforts failed to
deliver the desired results. The foray into biotech will help it tap an
emerging opportunity that is globally worth $30-40 billion.
·Polaris Software Lab, a financial technology company, is planning to
strengthen its insurance portfolio business by introducing new solutions.
The company is setting up a centre of excellence for insurance near
Chennai with an investment of around Rs 100 crore to develop new
solutions and to service company's insurance clients.
Infrastructure
·Unitech Ltd, the country's second-biggest real estate developer, said it
raised $325 million (Rs 1,625 crore) from selling new shares to qualified
institutions to repay a part of its debt of over Rs 8,900 crore and strengthen
capital.
·DLF, India's biggest real estate developer, is likely to pull out of its Rs 1,000
crore Infopark project in the city which was to be developed over 54 acres
in an approved special economic zone for information technology projects.
Others
·In the last three months ending March 2009, the promoters' stake in GHCL,
one of the leading chemical and textile companies, has declined by a
whopping 20.16 percentage points to 18.16 per cent. It was 38.32 per cent
at the end December 2008.