News Capsules

• Driven by higher prices of food items like pulses, cereals, milk, and fruit and vegetables, inflation rose marginally to minus 1.14 per cent against 1.61 per cent in the previous week.
• Anil Ambani Group company Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) is understood to have written another letter to Reliance Industries (RIL) to find a way for an agreement for gas supply by the latter. This is the second letter in as many days RNRL is shooting off to Mukesh Ambani-led RIL.
However, no comments could be obtained either from RIL or RNRL.
• Three weeks after celebrating his 55th birthday, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani will step down from the board of Infosys Technologies, of which he is co-chairman, on July 9 to take over as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government’s ambitious project to provide every citizen with a unique biometric identity card.
• ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) and its partners Indian Oil Corporation (IOC)and Oil India Ltd (OIL) have proposed an investment of about $5 billion in bringing to production a massive gas field they discovered in offshore Iran, in the next 3-4 years.
• GAIL India said it will invest over Rs 7,500 crore in laying natural gas transportation pipelines from Dabhol on Maharashtra coast to Bengaluru and Kochi to Mangalore.
• The department of revenue in the finance ministry has raised objections to an application by United Breweries (Holdings) Ltd (UBHL) seeking approval for raising Rs 708 crore by issuing fully convertible equity warrants to FirStart Inc, a company owned by UB group promoter Vijay Mallya’s mother, Lalitha, and headquartered in the British Virgin Islands.
• Areva T&D India, an arm of French power equipment maker Areva, today said it has bagged an order worth about Rs 1,200 crore from domestic steel major Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) for a power project.
• Tata Power Company (TPC), which supplies 500 Mega watts (Mw) of power to the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) group company Reliance Infrastructure's (R-Infra's) distribution area in Mumbai, has decided to discontinue the supply from April 1, 2010.
• Tata Steel, the world’s sixth-largest steelmaker, has posted a 59.91 per cent fall in profit at Rs 4,950.90 crore in the financial year ended March 2009, after incurring heavy restructuring costs to save its downturn-hit subsidiary, Corus, in UK.
• Unitech Ltd, the country’s second-largest property developer, reported a decline of 22 per cent in its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended March 31 to Rs 279.7 crore, compared with Rs 360.2 crore for the corresponding period last year. Net profit for the full year 2008-09 also fell 28 per cent at Rs 1,197.7 crore, compared with Rs 1,661.9 crore for the corresponding period last year. Revenue for the year came down 23 per cent, to Rs 3315.6 crore, as compared with Rs 4,280.1 crore for the corresponding period last year.
• Pfizer has increased its tender offer price to Rs 830 per share, an increase of 23 per cent over the original offer price of Rs 675 per share, to acquire 33.7 per cent stake in its Indian subsidiary, Pfizer Ltd.
• Kirloskar Brothers Ltd(KBL), a leading player in the pump manufacturing segment, is looking at acquisitions in the US and Europe in the pumping solutions space, and hopes to complete the process within this fiscal. The company is at the same time bullish on the power sector, especially by the opportunities thrown open by the Indo-US nuke deal.