BackNeed to Know | JPMorgan recommends options as rupee falls
Need to Know | JPMorgan recommends options as rupee falls
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Mumbai: Investors should use currency options to guard against losses as the rupee heads for the steepest slide since 1991, JPMorgan Chase and Co. said.
Investors should buy rupee put options granting the right to sell the currency against the dollar, said Vikas Agarwal, a strategist at the third biggest US bank. The rupee will fall to 45 per dollar, a two-year low, by 31 December as funds pull money out of emerging markets, he said. JPMorgan recommends buying options as “insurance" against such a slump.
- Bloomberg
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SBI ratings downgraded by Goldman Sachs
Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI) and other government-controlled lenders in the South Asian nation were downgraded to “sell" from “neutral" by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday.
The country’s financial sector was cut to “cautious" from “neutral" on slowing loan growth, rising bad debt and increased provisions by Goldman Sachs analyst Sampath Kumar. Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda and Indian Overseas Bank were the other lenders whose ratings were also reduced.
- Bloomberg
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Tishman to raise $1 bn for property fund
Mumbai: Tishman Speyer Properties LP, the owner of New York’s Rockefeller Center, is planning to raise $1 billion in a fund to invest in Indian real estate, said Revathy Ashok, its managing director for the South Asian nation.
The New York-based company has yet to determine when the fund will open, Ashok said. Tishman currently manages a $350 million fund for India and has invested 60% of the money so far, she said. Tishman is developing offices and homes on 400 acres of land in Hyderabad, and plans to invest in properties in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai, Ashok said.
- Bloomberg
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Times ready with biz channel team
New Delhi: The upcoming business news channel from Times Global Broadcasting Co. Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd, has put in place its senior editorial team. The company is also in talks with potential content partners, but is unlikely to bring on board a strategic investor, said chief executive Chintamani Rao. The company bought back a 25.82% stake held by Reuters Singapore Pte Ltd early this year. Rao said the channel will be launched during the fourth quarter of the financial year.
Bloomberg’s Asia columnist Andy Mukherjee and former Business Today managing editor R. Sridharan are joining the channel as senior editors. Sidharth Dubey from Reuters TV has been hired as lead anchor and senior editor. All of them will report to ‘The Economic Times‘ executive editor Rahul Joshi, who is also heading the TV project. Former NDTV Profit senior editor Abheek Barman is also part of the team as consulting editor.
- Staff Writer
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Asia seen as growing market for biosimilars
Singapore: Asia may be the fastest-growing market for generic biotechnology drugs by 2013 as lower-priced copies of treatments for diabetes and anemia spur demand in countries including India and China, Frost and Sullivan Inc. said.
Sales of so-called biosimilars in Southeast Asia alone may expand to $3.1 billion by 2013 from “hardly anything" now, Rhenu Bhuller, Frost & Sullivan’s vice president for pharmaceuticals and health care, said .
Companies including Biocon Ltd and Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd are among those developing biosimilars which may challenge drugs such as Johnson & Johnson’s Eprex and Novo Nordisk A/S’s insulin.
- Bloomberg
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News Corp to launch Fox Star Studios
Mumbai: Twentieth Century Fox and Star TV, the satellite broadcaster, have joined forces to launch Fox Star Studios, a new business which will span movie production, marketing and distribution.
The News Corp.-owned units said the 50:50 joint venture will deliver slates of local language films in Asia, kicking off in India before expanding its presence into SouthEast Asia and establishing a foothold in China.
Although the company did not reveal its production targets, industry sources speculated that the venture would release three films before the year-end, with ten films targeted in 2009.
Vijay Singh, currently head of strategy and corporate development at Star India, will head up the new venture in India. News Corp. owns ‘The Wall Street Journal’, which has an exclusive content partnership in India with Mint.
- Staff Writer
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Sesa Goa aims to double its iron-ore production
Mumbai: India’s biggest non-state iron-ore exporter, Sesa Goa Ltd, will spend as much as $700 million (Rs3,143 crore) to double its mining capacity to 25 million tonnes (mt) by 2010.
The company is looking to buy mines in central Africa and Brazil, chairman Anil Agarwal said in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Sesa Goa, a unit of Vedanta Resources Plc., exports almost 94% of its annual 12.4mt output to steelmakers in China and Japan.
- Bloomberg
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Inflation to be high till year-end: Pronab Sen
New Delhi: India’s inflation rate is likely to stay at 10% or above until the end of 2008, according to the government’s top statistician.
“I expect inflation will stay in double-digits till the end of the year," chief statistician Pronab Sen said in an interview on Tuesday. The moderation in inflation seen in the last two weeks will continue, he said.
Wholesale prices in Asia’s third biggest economy rose 12.34% in the week to 23 August from a year earlier, easing from respective gains of 12.4% and 12.63% in the previous two weeks.
The $912 billion (Rs40.95 trillion) economy is forecast to grow at the slowest pace in four years in the year to 31 March.
- Bloomberg
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GVK, Nuclear Power seek overseas reactors
Mumbai: GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd and Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd plan to buy reactors and equipment from General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Co. Llc. when a three-decade ban on the country’s atomic trade is lifted.
GVK, which seeks to enter the nuclear power business, is also negotiating with Alstom SA and Siemens AG, chairman G.V. Krishna Reddy said in an interview on Tuesday. State-run monopoly Nuclear Power plans to buy more than $14 billion (Rs62,860 crore) of equipment next year, chairman Shreyans Kumar Jain said on Monday.
- Bloomberg
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GVK Power plans to sell stake in power business
Singapore: Indian power producer GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd plans to sell 20% of its electricity business to fund expansion, chairman G.V. Krishna Reddy said.
The New Delhi-based company is in talks with Standard Chartered Bank, Merrill Lynch and Co. and Cityspring Infrastructure Trust, a unit of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte., for the stake sale, Reddy said.
- Bloomberg
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Bhel wins Rs2,200 bn power plant order
New Delhi: India’s biggest power-equipment maker, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel), said it won a Rs2,200 billion order to build a gas-fired plant in Tripura.
Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd on 23 June said its unit ONGC Tripura Power Co. Pvt. Ltd placed the order with Bharat Heavy for equipment.
Two units generating 363.3MW each will be set up for ONGC Tripura, state-controlled Bhel said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
ONGC Tripura Power is a venture between Oil and ONGC, IL&FS and Tripura government, the company said.
- Bloomberg
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Reliance sets up energy trading units abroad
Mumbai: India’s most valuable company, Reliance Industries Ltd, said it had set up subsidiaries in London and Singapore to trade in petroleum products.
Reliance Global Energy Services Ltd, based in London, will be headed by Peter Ward, a former president at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s gas and power trading unit, the Mumbai-based company said in an e-mailed statement today.
Another former Shell executive, Michael Ng, will head the Singapore-based Reliance Global Energy Services Singapore Pte, according to the statement. Ng was head of Shell’s jet fuel trading business in Asia, Reliance said.
- Bloomberg
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