The Hindu Business Line : Weekly News Round-up

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation, which appointed three new private sector fund managers in August, has postponed transfer of funds to the newly appointed fund managers. Senior EPFO officials told Business Line that they had been trying to complete the process by September 1, but owing to various internal reasons the transfer would be delayed by some more days.

Adani Power Ltd has received SEBI approval for the proposed Rs 5,630-crore IPO. Sources close to the development say the company's IPO proposal received the go-ahead, valid for 90 days, on September 5.

The Supreme Court has directed sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh to clear all outstanding cane arrears to growers for the 2007-08 crushing season at the rate of Rs 110 per quintal within the next four weeks. This rate is lower than the State Advised Price of Rs 125 for quintal for the current season.

The new Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Dr D Subbarao, who singled out inflation-control as his first priority, has said the current high level of inflation is short-term in nature and monetary policy measures will have an effect on it.

Citing the recent inflationary trend as having its origins in the supply side, he said this can be moderated largely through supply-side measures, while demand-side responses have to complement these measures.

The Vedanta group is restructuring its businesses. The group will now have three commodity-based verticals like copper, zinc and zinc-lead; aluminium and energy; and iron ore. According to the group management, this is designed to eliminate conflict of interest between the different group companies.

Vedanta also announced plans to invest $9.8 billion to increase its aluminium production to 2.6 million tonnes a year and emerge as the world's fifth largest aluminium producer by 2012.

Diageo, the world's largest liquor company which sports brand leaders like Smirnoff vodka and Johnnie Walker whisky , and two other companies have expressed their interest in picking up stake in United Spirits, Chairman, Mr Vijay Mallya, has said.

Mr Mallya said there were at least three strategic investors who were keen on picking up stake in United Spirits.

ArcelorMittal is anticipating a major cost overrun to the tune of around 50 per cent in its investments in Orissa and Jharkhand owing to delays caused in land acquisition and mining leases.

The Group Chairman, Mr L.N. Mittal, said that during the last two years, costs had increased between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. He, however, could not ascertain the extent by which costs would go up finally.

The rupee further weakened by 26 paise against the dollar on Wednesday, to levels last seen in November 2006.

It crossed the psychologically important level of 45 to the dollar, on account of large-scale dollar buying by gold and oil importers. There was a huge demand-supply mismatch as inflows were insufficient, said forex dealers.

SEBI has now proposed electronic trading of rights entitlements through stock exchanges.

In the proposed process, the rights entitlements will be credited into the individual shareholder's demat account. Currently, the process involves physical renunciation of rights entitlements.

The annual Wholesale Price Index-based inflation for the week-ended August 30 eased of to 12.10 per cent, below the previous week's annual rise of 12.34 per cent. The annual inflation rate was 3.72 per cent during the corresponding week of the previous year.

Forex reserves declined by $6.498 billion in the week ended September 5, three times as much as it did a week ago, chiefly because the dollar appreciated against other global currencies.

Forex reserves fell to $288.8 billion. In the previous week, the reserves had fallen by $1.97 billion to $295.309 billion.

Compiled by Mohan Padmanabhan
Podcast by B L Sudarsan