India Inc. - Page 2

With the bidding process of Satyam gaining momentum, till now it seems that there are just 3 players vying for the company, that are L&T Infotech, Tech Mahindra and Spice Corp.

Other IT Indian majors like HCL Tech, Wipro, Infosys and international players such as IBM, HP, Oracle and Cognizant seems to have stayed away from the bidding process maybe due to the lack of clarity on Satyam’s financial position and legal liabilities.

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Future Group, faced with topline and bottomline pressures is thinking otherwise. The recent easing of FDI norms has prompted the company to undertake a major retructring exrcies to unlock the hidden value in its various formats.

Uptil now Future Group has 2 listed companies – Pantaloon Retail (value, lifestyle and home retail) and Future Capital (financial services). And as per CNBC TV18, Biyani wants to demerge Pantaloon Retail into four separate companies and then sale stake in different companies to raise funds, mainly to foreign players.

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The global markets are witnessing a brief revival during the week primarily attributed to the internal memo issued by Citi CEO Vikram Pandit to its employees.

Off late Citibank had become a penny stock with 40% of it owned by US Government, however it has but all seems to have tide the storm and brought back the bank into shape.

In its internal memo, Pandit has laid strength on two factors – capital strength and earnings power, which can also be understood as Debt/Equity ratio and operating profit respectively.

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With stock market touching new lows every day and still no chances of calling a bottom, investors are hardpressed with choices for their investment decisions.

Even the safe fixed return investments are seeing reduced returns owing to cut in deposit rates. Other avenues such as Debt Mutual Funds, company FDs have safety issues while ULIPs levy heavy charges on the premium paid.

In such cases, there is a scenario wherein investors can choose those stocks which have been paying regular dividend over the years and have reasonably good growth prospects.

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Most countries in the world have distinct identification symbols for their currency – $ represents the US Dollar, £ is used for GBP, € for Euro, etc. but there’s still no official currency sign for the Indian Rupee.

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In what could turn out to be a landmark case, the Supreme Court of India has said bloggers may face libel and even prosecution for the entire contents of their blog, including user submitted comments.

It started when 19 year old Kerala resident Ajith D started an Orkut community against Shiv Sena that received several anonymous posts leveling certain allegations at the party. The Shiv Sena youth wing registered a criminal complaint, and Ajith was served a summons by a Maharashtra court to appear for the hearing.

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Over four quarters of continuous losses and erosion in 90% of its market cap, Citigroup shares have touched a new low of $1.95 making it less valuable than even State Bank of India.

The m-cap of SBI as on 20-Feb-09 was Rs.66,285 crore, 25% more than that of Citigroup which was Rs.52,931 crore.

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Alarmed by the growing number of instances of Western yoga gurus claiming copyrights to ancient “asanas”, the Government of India has decided to fight back.

The Union Health Ministry has assembled a team of 200 researchers from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to put on record all known yoga postures and techniques in a comprehensive database called Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL).

The Government of India hopes that future patent applications would be rejected on the basis of “prior art” from the information in the TKDL.

Amit Varma, who authors the hugely popular India Uncut blog, has been named by BusinessWeek magazine as one of the most powerful people in India for 2009.

Blogger Amit Varma brings a particular libertarian point of view to his columns and blog items, but also a risqué sense of humor that keeps readers hooked. ..he represents a libertarian, anti-tax and anti-government sensibility that is still quite rare in the country.

Big round of applause!

Related: Top Blogs of India

After the less than expected returns from Jeevan Astha policy, LIC has come out with a money back policy with a tenure to choose from 9 years and 12 years.

The main plank which LIC is banking on the plan is that of guaranteed returns which in 9 year term is 6.5% of sum assured and 7% of SA in 12 year policy with the premium paying term being 9 years in both the cases.

The policy also gives regular 3 yearly survival benefits and claims that the rate of return is similar to the returns given by LIC Jeevan Astha policy.

But on using a simple IRR function on MS Excel, it can be easily concluded that the policy gives very low returns contrary to the claims of LIC.

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