Today's Business Brew from Indian Papers
Nifty slips below 2600; BPCL, HUL, TCS down (ET)
The Sensex opened 67 points lower at 8,259. The index is at almost the day’s low, down 111 points at 8,215. Hindustan Unilever has plunged 3% to Rs 217. Jaiprakash Associates has shed 2.5% at Rs 68. Sterlite, Reliance and TCS have dropped over 2% each to Rs 244, Rs 1,145 and Rs 470, respectively. Wipro, ITC and Sun Pharma have shed 2% each at Rs 209, Rs 162 and Rs 1,002, respectively. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Infrastructure and Infosys have slipped nearly 2% each to Rs 591, Rs 444 and Rs 1,198, respectively. Tata Power, Hindalco, ACC and Reliance Communications have declined around 1.5% each to Rs 629, Rs 39, Rs 524 and Rs 136, respectively.(BS)
National Aviation Company of India Limited (Nacil), formed after the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines in 2007, surpassed its own estimations of losses for 2007-08 and its working capital need this financial year, which is already 42 per cent higher than last year, is likely to surpass the company board’s sanctioned limit of a whopping Rs 13,550 crore. Also its exposure of banks has breached the limits set for a single company.(IE)
SpiceJet Ltd is in talks with the GoAir for either a merger or to acquire a controlling stake (Mint)
Infosys Technologies Ltd, says it has completed absorbing all 20,000 engineering students who graduated last year and to whom it had made job offers on campus. (Mint)
The worsening economic climate in the US indicates that the challenges will only increase for Indian IT companies, which derive half of their revenues from the region.The resultant fallout of a slowdown has been a drop in IT spends by US companies, forcing Indian IT companies to offer bigger discounts to potential customers and re-price existing contracts at lower rates.(BS)
US IT companies turning to Zero-based budgeting (ET)
Nokia has dropped broad hints of its intentions to enter the netbook market. (BS-blog)
India’s capacity of manufacturing power equipment is set to increase four-fold to around 43,000 Mw over the next five years through investments of over Rs 30,000 crore. (BS)