The Hindu Business Line : Sunday, January 05, 2003

Shaw Wallace revises open offer for Skol
SHAW Wallace Breweries Ltd has revised the open offer to the equity shareholders of Skol Breweries Ltd. SWBL will now acquire up to 33,39,574 equity shares representing 10.03 per cent of the issued equity capital of Skol, as against the earlier ... More

FINANCIAL SERVICES

A STeP towards better market structure
STRAIGHT-THROUGH Processing (STP) involves electronically capturing and processing transactions in one pass, from the point of first deal to final settlement. STP enables trade orders to be processed, confirmed, cleared and settled in a ... More

MUTUAL FUNDS

Long-term performance of equity funds — It's all in the timing
A FEW equity mutual funds have, in the last six years, well rewarded investors so long as they kept faith in them. But as much faith, investors also needed to know when to enter and exit. While fund managers have been quite good at making the ... More

Sundaram Bond Saver: Invest
INVESTORS with long-term funds at their disposal can consider fresh investments in Sundaram Bond Saver. The performance of the fund since inception in November 1997 has been impressive. The expected return for an investor over a holding period ... More

Zurich India Taxsaver: Invest
THE Zurich India Taxsaver is good investment candidate for those looking to build a long-term exposure to equities. The fund has an impressive track record of performance over the past six years, having consistently beaten the S&P CNX Nifty over ... More

Tata MF alters income scheme profiles
TATA Mutual Fund has proposed some significant changes to the features of its income schemes. It plans to have a separate Monthly Income Plan out of the Tata Income Fund (Regular Income Option). This will be christened the Tata Monthly Income ... More

Franklin India Prima Plus: Hold
INVESTORS in Franklin India Prima Plus can stay invested given the fund's fairly good track record. But fresh exposures can be avoided as the highly concentrated sector focus on pharmaceutical and IT - which account for around 43 per cent of ... More

Bond funds flirt with high risk
IT WOULD be a safe bet to assume that the average portfolio maturity of your bond fund would be higher than five years at the end of December 2002. For example, the average maturity of Prudential ICICI's Income Plan, a fairly large fund, was ... More

MFs glow as gilt and equity shine
MUTUAL funds of all hues posted positive returns in December . The run up in prices, in both the equity and debt markets, helped the performance of mutual funds. Only a handful of funds logged negative returns. The equity market generated ... More

UTI Petro Fund: Book profits
INVESTORS in the sector-specific UTI Petro Fund can contemplate booking profits to take advantage of the sharp spurt in NAV over the past year. The UTI Petro Fund is among the top ten performers in 2002 and has a good track record. But the ... More

How individual funds fared
THOUGH more than half the equity funds notched up higher returns than the market indices when held for a six-year period, consistency has been a rare virtue among them. In fact, just three of the 66 equity funds consistently outperformed the S&P ... More

STOCK MARKETS

How T+2 settlement cycle will work
SEBI had introduced T+5 rolling settlement in equity market from July 2001 and subsequently shortened the settlement cycle to T+3 from April 2002. After having gained experience of T+3 rolling settlement and also taking further steps such as ... More

Will the bull run in 2003?
THE cover of the January 13 issue of Fortune magazine screams, "Can this bull run again?" The graphic of the bull and the investor in the story presents a picture difficult for any investorto digest. The bull has no feet and is perched ... More

A cool show
THE stock market sentiment remained buoyant in December 2002, with both the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex recording net gains. The Nifty gained 2.4 per cent while the Sensex went up by 3.3 per cent in December. However, there were quite a few stocks ... More

DERIVATIVES MARKETS

Position limits and violations
Position limits: Clearing members are subject to the following exposure / position limits in addition to initial margins requirements. Exposure limits Trading member-wise/ custodial participant-wise position limit Client-level ... More

REGULATORY BODIES & RULINGS

SEBI working on corporate debt trading in SEs
INVESTORS would soon get to regularly trade corporate debt paper through the stock exchanges, which are increasingly becoming multi-product, in line with the changing dynamics of the market. The capital markets regulator, Securities and ... More

INTERVIEW

`MF investors are well-protected' — Mr. S. V. Prasad, President, Zurich India MF
Indian investors have a lot of regulatory protection. But regulations cannot be a substitute for active tracking of your investments," says Mr S.V. Prasad, President of Zurich India Mutual Fund. As a member of SEBI's Advisory Committee on ... More

COMMENTARY

Pare exposure in ICICI Bank
THE market was confined to a narrow trading range during the week. The absence of fresh positive triggers kept the markets under check. As a result, markets were unable to hold ground at higher levels. On three days during the week, the Sensex ... More

Weak outlook for Nifty
Nifty (1089.6): The index was unable to make any headway on the upside. As of now, the index needs to break out of this trading band for resumption of any meaningful trend. Given the recent price action, it would be safer to defer long ... More

Global Markets in 2002: A continuing tale of woe
FOR the global stock markets, it was another awful year, particularly for the world strongest economies. Sluggish economic growth, fears of war (in Iraq), accounting scandals, poor corporate earnings, bankruptcies, dividend cuts, asbestos ... More

Nasdaq: Short-term bounce likely
THE key US stock market indices recorded net declines for the year 2002. This is the third straight year of net drop in value for the American market. Aided by the strong rally on Thursday, the benchmark indices managed to record weekly gains ... More

Polaris sheds over 9 pc
Gujarat Ambuja Cement (Rs 165): The stock price of the Gujarat Ambuja Cement went up this week by 2 per cent following the reports of the company posting a 35 per cent growth in sales. The increase in the stock price may be due to the ... More

RECOMMENDATION

i-flex: Potential for appreciation low
EXISTING investors in the stock of i-flex Solutions can consider paring their exposures. The stock has run up sharply in the last few trading sessions. The stock is now trading at a price to earnings multiple of 22 times its earnings for the 12 ... More

Mico: Buy
THERE appears to be no signs of a slowdown in the automobile industry, which has been on a recovery path since late 2001. Aided by the growth in commercial vehicle and passenger car sales, quite a few companies, including Motor Industries Company ... More

Kotak Mahindra Finance: Sell
SHAREHOLDERS of Kotak Mahindra Finance can consider exiting from the stock. Given the present levels of valuation, the potential for share price appreciation is not appealing. The stock trades at a price-to-book value of around one. ... More

GE Shipping: Pare exposures
SHAREHOLDERS of Great Eastern Shipping can use the recent improvement in stock valuation to pare exposures. The fundamentals underlying the shipping industry are unlikely to take a sharp turn for the better. The worst in terms of declining tanker ... More

Engineering companies: Ticking well
ENGINEERING companies started 2002 started on a positive note with bulging order-books and profits. The share prices of some engineering company stocks soared to new highs, generating as much as 50 per cent returns during the past six months. ... More

Saregama: Hold and sell on uptrend
SHAREHOLDERS of Saregama can stay invested, but can use any uptrend in the stock valuation to cut exposures. It is full of wrong scores in its balance-sheet compared to 2001-02, when it reported losses of Rs 25.7 crore on sales of Rs 104.5 crore. ... More

IPOS

Divi's Lab plans public issue
DIVI'S Laboratories Ltd (DLL) is coming out with a public issue of 32,04,684 equity shares, towards part-financing its business expansion plans costing Rs 42.49 crore. The issue, which would constitute 25 per cent of the fully diluted ... More

INVESTOR PROTECTION

Penultimate in settlement
BY MOVING the trading and settlement system to a T+2 basis (trading day plus two days), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has taken a desirable step. That this move places the stock market trading system ahead of most developed ... More

Stock Quotes
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