Economic TImes - 27th September

We’ll invest $1-2 b in India in next 3 years: Blackstone
The world’s largest private equity company, Blackstone Group, could earmark up to $2 billion for investment in India over three years, stepping up its activity in the country in line with its rising economy stature.
New York-based Blackstone has already invested $1.2 billion since it started its operations in India five years ago.

Journey of a life time
Milestones are a time to look back & reflect. As the BSE Sensex returns to 20,000 – a mark it first breached in January 2008 before going under – It’s a reminder of its tumultuous journey of 25 years.

MFIs may get to open banks: Finance Minister
The RBI may soon allow micro-finance institutions to set up banks, Union Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Sunday & added RBI has framed a set of guidelines for setting up new banks, Following my announcement in the Budget, The apex bank is now planning to allow new entities to set up banks & has recently floated a discussion paper, interested parties & stakeholders have already submitted their suggestions to RBI.

RBI tells states to halt new biz to pvt banks
The RBI has told several state governments not to give new business, which could generate thousands of crores of income, to private sector banks. At least four states have received letters from the banking regulator in the past few months with the specific instruction.
The central bank has not spelt out the reason for its decision, but private banks thinks it is driven by their comparatively lower lending to government-sponsored programs- schemes that carry a slice of subsidy & are aimed at job creation & poverty reduction.


AVB, Bajaj buy into CARE
Aditya Birla Private Equity & Bajaj Holdings & Investment have together picked up around 10% stake in Rating Agency Credit Agency & Research Ltd (CARE), one of the top three rating firms in the country. The private equity firms have picked up this stake from two existing investors, ING Vysya Bank & Kotak Bank, for around Rs. 150 crore.

Move to reduce car cost
Japanese automakers have sought the introduction of automatic transmission system in the Indo-Japanese free trade agreement expected to be signed next month, to bring down the cost of automatic gear cars.

Bright Food in talks to buy UK’s United Biscuits
Bright Food Co. Ltd., Shanghai’s biggest food & dairy company, is in discussions about a possible purchase of the UK’s united Biscuits from the Blackstone group & PAI partners, the transactions may be valued at $3.2 billion.

Pact on pvt role in TAPI pipeline
Afghanistan, Pakistan & India have agreed to rope in a global energy major to execute & manage a $7.6 billion natural gas pipeline running their land, brightening the prospect of steady flow of gas from central Asia to energy hungry South Asia.

Gold ETFs : An excellent alternative to physical gold
Security: since the investment is in a non-material form, you don’t have to worry about storage or security.
Quality: SEBI regulations mandate the purity of the gold in GETFs to be 99.5% or above.
Liquidity: Gold ETFs can be traded on a real time basis.
Cost of buying & selling: Brokerage rates applicable (between 0.5-2%) are comparatively low.
Long term capital gains benefit: Gains become long term on completion of a holding period of 12 months vis-à-vis 3 years for physical gold.

India in wonderland
Weather has nominated India winner in the global food & fibre sweepstakes this year. The combination of a bumper harvest here & shortages created by bad weather in Brazil, Russia, Europe, china & Pakistan has ensured that India today possesses the world’s cheapest sugar, cotton, tea, corn, pepper, soyabeans & wheat. As the prices in the rest of the world are at multi-year highs, the spot light is on us & how much we can urgently supply.

ICC updates Incoterms
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has published revisions to its international commercial terms, also known as Incoterms, that will go into effect from January , 2011.
Incoterms are standard trade definitions most commonly used in international sales contracts. The rules are devised & published by ICC, which has copyrighted the term, & are usually revised every decade to better align with evolving trade practices.
The revised list, Incoterms 2010, contains a series of changes, such as a reduction in the number of terms to 11 from 13. The DAF, DES, DEQ & DDU designations have been eliminated, while two new terms, Delivered at terminal(DAT) & Delivered at place(DAP), have been added.
They attempt to better take into account the role cargo security & electronic data interchange now play in international trade. A panel of eight ICC delegates have studied four rounds of revisions since 2007 to produce the updated terms.


Submitted by:
Vaibhav Malik, Vidhu Lather, Virendra Pratap Singh, Yogendra Singh ( Sec –E)