Business Line - 27th September

Busines Line

The newspaper starts by covering a couple of major headlines, moving to some corporate news, the sentiments of the stock market and finally with editorials and articles on a variety of areas.
Key news items for the day have been as follows:
Requests for Selection (RFS) that were sent out by NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd ahve received an overwhelming response from power developers. It received applications for 1740 MW solar photovoltaics against target of 150MW. New and renewable sources of energy have been the talk out of the town and this enthusiastic response by developers has shown the promising returns behind this venture.
There have been changes in the percentage credit given by banks to different industries. The new figures show that the proportion of bank credit lent to the infrastructure has increased from 18.6% to 29%, where as sectors such as engineering, jewellery, chemicals and textiles that accounted for 32% of all the credit that banks extended t the industry have seen their share shrink to a mere 22%.
The government has increased the foriegn investment limit fin G-Secs from $5billion to $10billion. However, this hasnt generated much excitement within the FII's. The general perception lies that FII's are only interested in short term papers, it is actually the withholding tax that is the spoiler. (eg: If the coupon rate is 8.5%, FII' may get a return of only 6.8% after the withholding tax)
Both Indian and foriegn companies are eyeing opportunities in the light of India's Highway Development Programme, with a proposed investment of$65billion. Keeping this in mind, Reliance Infra was betting big on the roads vertical, eyeing orders worth Rs.20000crore by 2012. The Anil Ambani controlled Reliance Infrastructure Ltd will raise a debt of Rs.8400crore by next month to execute its current portfolio of 11 road projects worth Rs.12000crore.
ONGC Videsh (OVL), a wholly owned subsidiary of ONGC, has decided to change its strategy by looking fr partnerships with other players including private sector entities. Until now, OVL has been going for exploratory assets on its own with a greater amount of investment and risk. However, roping in a partner would help reduce financial risk but also in knowledge pooling.
The Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Ben S Bernanke stated that damage from financial crisis has left the US economy to grow at a slower pace than planned. The economy continues to finish the current quarter by expanding at a rate of 1.4%. Also, sluggish growth has kept unemployment levels at a rate above 9%. Even though new regulations have been pt in place to help the economy to revive, Mr. Bernanke claims that they would help prevent another meltdown.
Hyundai Motor Co will recall about 139500 cars in the US because of steering issues that could result in a loss or reduction in manouvering.
As a result of positive data, signalling improvement in demand for capital goods and technology products, the US stocks ended with gains for 4 straight weeks. Back home,thanks to the support by FII's, the BSE Sensex, NSE's S&P CNX Nifty moved up 2.3%. Dr.Reddy's Lab, HDFC Bank, Infosys and TATA motors registered all time highs. The biggest gainers of this week were sify and rediff.com. Bullish sentiments towards IT countries in the US lifted ADRs of Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Patni computers.


Group 1 ( Section F)
Aakriti Arora
Abhilasha Bharadwaj
Abhishek Goswami