The Hindu Business Line : Weekly News Round-up

After almost a month of hard negotiations, Bharti Airtel ended talks on a possible merger with South Africa's MTN because of disagreement over the holding structure.

Bharti said the structure proposed by MTN would not capture the synergies of the two companies and was a long-winded way of getting an indirect control of the combined entity, compromising the interest of the minority shareholders of Airtel.

AB Volvo of Sweden and Eicher Motors Ltd sealed their joint venture deal to make trucks in India.

Volvo will hold 50 per cent stake in the joint venture - VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd - through a combination of direct and indirect holdings, with EML taking the rest.

It is picking up 8.1 per cent stake in Eicher Motors Ltd. The stake is being bought from the promoters at Rs 691.68 a share for a total cost of Rs 157 crore.

Reliance Globalcom, a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, has acquired London-based managed network services provider, Vanco Group, for about Rs 324 crore.

The acquisition of Vanco would add Rs 1,550 crore to the annual revenues of Reliance Globalcom through secure long-term contracts with large enterprise customers.

After reporting profit for the last 10 quarters, Indian Oil Corporation reported a net loss of Rs 414.27 crore for the fourth quarter of 2007-08 against Rs 1,502.69 crore during the fourth quarter of last fiscal.

For the full year of 2007-08, the company posted a net profit of Rs 6,962.58 crore against Rs 7,499.47 crore in 2006-07.

Sun Pharmaceuticals dropped the $454-million proposal to acquire Israeli drug-maker Taro, a year after the deal had been formalised. The deal came off because of price disagreement.

In an announcement last Wednesday, Taro said that its board of directors had unanimously voted to terminate the May 18, 2007 merger agreement. The board was of the opinion that the deal was not in the best interests of the company.

The Centre has revised upwards the growth estimate of the GDP for 2007-08 to 9 per cent, from the earlier 8.7 per cent. The higher number is being ascribed to a better-than-expected performance of the farm sector.

The annual Wholesale Price Index-based inflation rose to a 44-month high of 8.10 per cent during the week ended May 17, up from a year-on-year increase of 7.82 per cent reported during the previous reported week.

The country's foreign exchange reserves surged by $2.090 billion to touch $316.17 billion for the week ended May 23.

This is the third consecutive week that the forex reserves have seen an increase. In these three weeks, the reserves have gone up by $3.671 billion.

Compiled by M.J. Madhavan
Podcast by S. Vasudevan & M.J. Madhavan