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Auto companies effected with supply chain disruptions
Mar 15th
Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Suzuki who were planning aggressive strategies for India’s top growth market were hit hard by Japan’s quake and face serious supply chain disruptions.
The only silver lining is India’s relatively small dependence on Japan. Auto experts said higher levels of localization levels and cost concerns prompting most Japanese car makers to import from Thailand would help the Indian subsidiaries.
Maruti Suzuki’s Hamamatsu plant has not been affected and the parent is using the Nagoya airport for air freight. Still, Maruti imports a number of components from Japan, and the problem gets worse as a number of its Indian vendors, too, source from the tsunami-battered country.
The Japanese auto industry has been severely impacted by the national tragedy. Honda has suspended production at all the Japanese plants till March 20 and is in touch with its vendors for exact damage assessment.
Toyota’s Indian unit, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, postponed the opening ceremony of its second plant scheduled for this week.
AOL announces cuts to its India force
Mar 11th
Online media company AOL who has an office in Bangalore, India made official that it will only have a token presence in India, with just over 100 employees, down from about 1,000 from now.
The fears of AOL’s big layoff came true at a town hall meeting addressed by AOL India head Kumar Talluri and officials from the US on Thursday in Bangalore. The AOL Indian staff were told that about 500 employees, including the entire management team, would be laid off.
HP and MindTree are expected to acquire some divisions. Sources said that HP would take 200 employees and Mind-Tree 170. This in return of AOL giving them work commitments for a few years.
AOL’s $315-million acquisition of The Huffington Post in the US has rendered much of the employee base in India redundant. AOL issued the following statement on Thursday: “Moving forward, our focus in India will be on our core capabilities around building the most compelling consumer facing products primarily for the Indian and other Asian markets. We’ll be partnering Mindtree and HP to round out our business operations.”
For those being laid off, the company has announced severance packages amounting to four months of their salaries for most employees, and six months of their salaries for executives at the director level and higher. Employees will also get an additional week’s salary for every year that they have served in the company. All changes will come into effect by July’2011.
Standard Chartered Private Equity arm to invest 85 Crore on Privi Organics
Mar 10th
Privi Organics, a Mumbai-based aroma chemical manufacturer and exporter is among the talks with a 85 crore investment made on it by the private equity arm of Standard Chartered Bank.
Most of the products manufactured by Privi Organics are used by fragrance and flavours companies. The Privi Organics also exports products to over 25 countries. It is planning an expansion of its manufacturing facilities at Mahad in Maharashtra and the fund infusion will partly be used to finance this expansion.
According to a report by SRI Consulting, the speciality chemical segment was among the hardest hit, leading to the shut down of a number of plants globally.
The specialty and fine chemicals market is pegged at $860 million and most of the products in this segment are used as additives in the textile, leather, paper, cosmetics and detergent industries. The global chemical industry underwent a major downturn during the recession.
“The aroma chemicals space presents significant opportunities for Indian companies, as India emerges as a key manufacturing center for aromatic and speciality chemicals,” said Rahul Raisurana, Managing Director, Standard Chartered Private Equity.
Banks getting ready for additional security measures
Aug 19th
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) declared that is mandatory for all the banks & financial institutions, to out in place an additional security level for their online transaction process. The additional authentication/validation based on information not visible on the cards for all online transactions seems to be a good step forward to address the ever increasing online frauds.
The registered users for the respective banks would be required to complete a process on the website of your bank or credit card company to generate the additional password. The additional password will be over and above the normal online card usage procedure. Given below are the registration steps issued by some banks already to the customers:
CITIBANK
| Just follow these 3 easy steps to get your IPIN instantly! | |
| Step 1 | Enter your personal details and request for an Online Authorisation Code (OAC) |
| Step 2 | Once your OAC reaches you on your E-mail / mobile, enter your OAC reference number, the OAC and your personal details |
| Step 3 | Select an IPIN (Internet Password) of your choice online Right here, right now! |
HDFC Bank Netsafe
NetSafe, is a unique online payment solution that offers you complete security while shopping on the Internet. With NetSafe, you can now shop online through a virtual credit card, without revealing your actual HDFC Bank Credit Card number.
Microsoft (Bing) & Yahoo joins hands to battle Google
Jul 31st
Bing is getting ready for the huge chunk of Web traffic in one bite by becoming Yahoo’s search engine. In exchange Yahoo will get 88 percent of the search-generated ad revenue from its sites in the first five years of this 10-year pact.
This comes after two months of Bing’s bounce back onto the Internet. By this move, Microsoft’s rebranded search engine leaped a lot closer to posing a serious challenge to the online Google.
Carol Bartz (Yahoo Chief Executive) said it saw shares drop by 8 percent on news of the partnership. Meanwhile, Microsoft saw rise in the price of its stock.
AIG facing public fury
Mar 19th
AIG staff bonuses is not going down with the US public tax payers. There has been cries of foul against the management and people has been asking for repayment of bonuses back to the Government.
Edward Liddy, AIG Chairman & CEO facing Congressional hearing claimed that all these bonuses are not performance bonuses, but retention bonuses which has got legal implications.
Excise duty & service tax reduces: Govt
Feb 25th
Giving break to the industry reeling under the blow of slowdown, the government today reduced the rates of excise duty and service tax.
As the general excise duty has been reduced from 10 per cent to 8 per cent, the rate of service tax has been cut from 12 per cent to 10 per cent.
Four per cent excise cut announced prior in the incentive package in December will continue beyond March 31, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said while winding up the debate on the Interim Budget in the Lok Sabha today.
The Lok Sabha later accepted the Interim Budget by voice vote, amidst a walkout by the Opposition BJP and erstwhile supporters Left parties.
Mukherjee said that duty on bulk cement has been reduced from 10 per cent to 8 per cent.
Mukherjee further said that excise duty on bulk cement which was 10 per cent (or Rs 290 per tonne, whichever is higher) has been reduced to 8 per cent (or Rs 230).
The duty allowance on naphtha for manufacture of power sector, he said, will persist beyond March 31, 2009.
The anomalies faced by suppliers to Special Economic Zone with regard to treatment of export profits will be addressed in the regular budget, he said.
As regards the states, Mukherjee said as part of the stimulus package they have been permitted to borrow an extra 0.5 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP). The exception, he added, will persist in the next fiscal.
Brushing aside the disapproval that government had not done adequate for the industry, Mukherjee said it was vital to stick to Parliamentary norms and constitutional propriety at a time when the term of the present government was about to end.
“It is not possible for me to indulge into financial profligacy without adequate resources”, he said.
Though, he added, dissimilar measures taken by the government and the Reserve Bank must be given time to have an impact on the economy.
Sufficient liquidity has been pumped into the system to allow banks to regulate their interest rates, he said.
Since September, RBI has injected about Rs 4 lakh crore into the system and abridged a variety of key policy rates following which several banks have started reducing interest rates.
Satyam: More arrests in Satyam case says Andhra Police
Feb 5th
Even as SEBI officials are quizzing Satyam Computer creator B Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama Raju at the Chanchalguda jail in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh Police are probable to make further arrests in the Rs 7,800-crore fraud linking the IT major.
CID officials investigating the case have not ruled out further arrests in concerning a fortnight.
“We are constantly scrutinising the seized documents and trying to retrieve data from the hard disks and laptops recovered during the raids of residences and offices of Satyam officials including its former chairman B Ramalinga Raju,” a senior CID official inquisitive the Satyam fraud said on Thursday.
There are over 25 trunks full with detained documents and “we are putting all our efforts to scrutinise (them) with the help of financial experts,” the CID official said.
To recover the data from the detained computers, the CID has been captivating the services of experts of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and Forensic Science Laboratory, besides IT experts within the department, he said.
He said the probe organization has been prearranged by the court to share the information it has unearthed from the detained matter with other Central investigating agencies like SEBI, the SFIO and the Income-Tax department.
Approached for takeover: Satyam
Jan 21st
New Delhi: Domestic and foreign companies has approached troubled software exporter Satyam for takeover, the IT company’s board member Tarun Das said on Tuesday.
The board will meet for two days starting January 22 in Hyderabad and would talk about the issues such as search CEO and CFO, legal matters and instant cash necessities to run the company, he told reporters in New Delhi.
The board would also discuss whether it needs to ask the government to stand as a guarantor for raising loans. Das said the company has been approached for takeover by both international and Indian IT firms. There have been unverified reports that the company might soon employ investment bankers to give guidance on a merger or sale.
Earlier, another board member Deepak Parekh had said that choice of merger was always open for the company. The board meeting would conscious on class action lawsuits filed against the company in the US.
The six-member board, selected by the government to run the firm after a shocking Rs 7,800 crore fraud revelation by founder Ramalinga Raju on January 7, last met on January 17.
