The Hindu Business Line : Weekly News Round-up

They can soon directly invest up to 15 per cent of their investible funds in shares of companies on which derivatives are available in the BSE or NSE.

This has been provided in the new investment pattern for non-government provident, superannuation and gratuity funds issued by the Finance Ministry here on Thursday. This would come into force from April 1, 2009.

The annual Wholesale Price Index-based inflation rose to 12.44 per cent during the week ended August 2, above the previous week's annual rise of 12.01 per cent, government data showed on Thursday.

During the latest reported week, the WPI moved up to 240.4 points from 239.6 points during the previous reported week.

The annual rate of inflation stood at 4.39 per cent during the corresponding week a year ago.

The Union Cabinet approved the implementation of the recommendations of the Sixth Central Pay Commission after some modifications.

Central government employees, including the Armed Forces and Railways, are to get pay hikes averaging 21 per cent from September this year.

The revised pay scales will come into effect from January 1, 2006 and revised rates of allowances from September 1, 2008.

Arrears would be from January 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008.

The US Federal Trade Commission has cleared Sun Pharma's proposal to buy Israel-drug maker Taro.

But it asked the Mumbai-based drug maker to sell rights and assets of three of its generic versions of anti-epilepsy drug carbamazepine, as an anti-competitive move.

Sun has agreed to sell these three distinct generic formulations to Gujarat's Torrent Pharmaceutical Ltd, an FTC note said.

Amid a continuing lacklustre performance by the core sector, industrial output registered a modest 5.4 per cent growth in June 2008 compared with a much higher 8.9 per cent rise in production recorded a year ago.

The growth in June, however, was higher than the upward-revised 4.1 per cent growth estimated in May this year, with both manufacturing output and electricity generation picking up on a sequential basis.

Capital markets' regulator SEBI has given the nod to NSE to offer currency futures trading.

NSE said it is ready to launch currency futures trading.

The stock exchange will commence mock trading in currency futures next week.

State Bank of India hiked its Benchmark Prime Lending Rate by one percentage point from August 12.

The rate is now 13.75 per cent, up from 12.75 per cent.

The bank said it has decided not to change the rates on education loans or on existing and new home loans up to Rs 30 lakh.

For auto loans, the hike will be 0.50 percentage points.

Ma Foi Management, which has been a part of the Vedior group since 2004, has now become a part of the Netherlands-based Randstad, the second largest HR services company in the world.

Consequent to this merger, Ma Foi has also announced the integration of Team4U, a Delhi-based staffing company.

With this, the combined staff strength of Ma Foi will grow to over 46,000 and the core staff strength to 2,054 in India.

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