Daily News Roundup - May 21 2009

Reliance Industries has received the government go-ahead to sign agreements with firms supplying the much-needed gas to households and car owners in major cities. (ET)
ONGC and Oil India provide support of Rs9.4bn in form of subsidy. (BL)
Tata Steel rules out stake sale in Teesside plant. (FE)
Bharti-Wal-Mart will open its first cash and carry store in India in Amristar, Punjab next week. (BS)
Bharti Airtel plans to open 1600 Airtel service centres in Tamil Nadu by end of this month followed by another 4000 such centres by end of March ‘10. (FE)
PGCIL is in talks with atleast 4 US companies to jointly bid for transmission contracts there. (Mint)
Grupo Mexico has bid US$1.6bn for Asarco to counter Sterlite’s offer. (BS)
TCS expects its Asia-Pacific business to grow faster than the overall company. (BS)
Tata Motors is understood to have begun refunding dealers across the country for unsold Nano booking forms. (ET)
Tata Motors has raised Rs42bn through the issue of secured non-convertible debentures (NCD) in the local market. (ET)
Punjab National Bank to sell 26% stake in housing finance arm to Dawnay Day. (BL)
Reliance Power has bagged 4 hydro power projects of 2.5GW capacity worth over Rs180bn. (BS)
Reliance Infrastructure has achieved the financial closure of the Western Region System Strengthening power transmission project and a consortium of banks led by SBI will fund Rs9.7bn as debt. (BS)
Grasim puts its RMC investments plans at rest. (FE)
Sobha Developers and Mumbai-based HDIL are considering raising funds through QIP. (ET)
Aditya Birla Group may sell a stake in its loss-making retail venture to private equity firms Warburg Pincus, KKR and Goldman Sachs. (ET)
Tech Mahindra eyes 50% stake of VGE in Satyam’s JV. (FE)
Unitech has sold an office space in Saket, New Delhi, for Rs5bn as part of a plan to raise money. (BS)
Telenor hikes stake in Unitech Wireless to 49%. (BL)
HCL Technologies has entered into outsourcing services engagement with MTV Networks. (BS)
Jain Irrigation bags Rs650mn order from Balh Valley Medium Irrigation project in Himachal Pradesh. (BL)
Pfizer Inc has inked pact with Claris Lifesciences to market off patent injectibles. (BS)
Government plans to divest 10% in BSNL once the new minister assumes office. (BS)
BSNL may reject Huawei’s bid for the GSM line order for the western telecom circles. (BS)
KS Oil to get Rs4.5bn funding from PE investors, GDR and promoter funding for development, expansion and acquisition of agricultural assets in South East Asia. (BL)
Surya Roshni to complete its Rs6bn expansion by fiscal end. (BL)
Prolec GE announced that it has enhanced its stake in Indo Tech Transformers to 74.35%. (BL)
Texmaco bags 3,455 wagon orders from Railways. (BL)
Swan Telecom is set to outsource its IT and backoffice functions to Tech Mahindra and will award a network equipment deal to Ericsson. (ET)
NHPC, MMTC, BSNL and Oil India are some of the public sector firms that may be upgraded to navratna status ahead of their IPOs. (ET)
MTNL executives have called off their strike. (BS)
Merck board has approved Rs1.6bn buyback offer. (BS)
Air India board plans to raise Rs30bn to meet its working capital requirements among others. (BS)
MMRDA has invited pre-qualification bids for construction of the tallest building with 101 floors. (BS)
Commerce ministry has initiated steps to reduce the time taken to develop SEZ’s by simplifying procedures to get tax free industrial enclaves notified. (BS)
India may scrap the ban on rice exports after record harvest and increased stockpiles. (BS)
Monsoon has set over the Andaman Sea and part of south Bay of Bengal, right on schedule. (BS)
The new petroleum minister plans to freeing retail petroleum prices and set up transnational gas pipelines. (BS)
India’s import of sensitive products rose by 27.7% in fiscal ended March ’09. (FE)
Banks have lent Rs58.8bn to companies, individuals and other businesses during the fortnight ended May 8, according to the latest figures released by the RBI. (ET)
Demand for gold in India declined by a whopping 83% to 17.7 tons in the January-March period from the year-ago period. (ET)
A government panel is opposing a safeguard measure aimed at preventing owners of new telecom licences from making windfall profits. (ET)