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ICICI Bank opens first branch in US

New York, Mar 01: ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector BNK, has opened its first branch in the United States at posh midtown New York.

Under the licence granted by regulators here, the bank would initially provide services to corporate customers, but it aims to go into general retail banking also.

The executive director Sonjoy Chatterjee said that at present the bank is authorised to do retail business for Indians who come to the United States on work H1B visa.

The bank, he said, would offer package facilities to them. For example, they could be given credit card and chequebook before they leave for the US to enable them to do business from the day of their arrival.

Asked whether Indians on other visas too could avail of the facility, Chatterjee said only and specifically H1B visa is mentioned in the licence.

The bank would offer a suite of banking services including working capital, acquisition finance, trade services and treasury solution to corporates and savings products to qualified individuals.

"India's growth momentum and its trade relationship with the united states has reached an inflexion point, ICICI Bank's entry into the US market provides it with a great platform to service the various opportunities arising from this paradigm shift," said managing director and CEO K V Kamath.

The opening of the New York branch, said Chatterjee, completes the strategy to be present across all major financial centres.

"Our initial focus will be on corporate cross border opportunities and the local banking needs of Indians coming to work in the US," he added.

Kamath said the bank is well positioned to channel investment activities of Indian companies in the US and vice versa.

"The BAK is simultaneously planning to leverage its presence in New York to significantly ramp up its India-based services to non resident Indians in the United States," he added.

ICICI Bank is India's second-largest lender with consolidated total assets of USD 115 billion as of December 31, 2007 and market capitalisation of USD 30 billion.

Honda's natural gas car named as Greenest Vehicle of 20081 Mar, 2008, 1539 hrs IST, AGENCIES
WASHINGTON: Honda's Civic GX natural gas car has been named by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy as the greenest vehicle of 2008 for the fifth consecutive year.

According to a report in Environmental News Network, three other Honda vehicles also featured in the top list of the ACEEE.

In the 11th annual ACEEE's ranking of environmentally responsible vehicles, the natural gas-powered Civic GX ranked first with the gasoline Civic, Fit and Civic Hybrid joining the list of the 12 most environmentally-conscious vehicles available to the public.

This is the eighth year in a row that a Honda vehicle received the number one ranking and the seventh consecutive year that Honda vehicles held at least four positions in the top 12, an impressive one-third of all vehicles on the list.

For determining the rankings, the ACEEE used a singular measure that incorporates fuel economy, health-related pollution impacts and global warming emissions.

All vehicles are then analyzed and given a "Green Score." This score is used in ACEEE's ranking system, resulting in a ranking of each vehicle's total environmental performance, including a list of the 12 "greenest" and 12 "meanest" vehicles.

According to the report, the Civic GX, first introduced in 1998, is the cleanest internal combustion vehicle certified by the Environmental

Protection Agency and is 90 per cent cleaner than the average gasoline-powered car on the road today.

Tata Motors commences sales of Sumo Grande
1 Mar, 2008, 1658 hrs IST,
BANGALORE: Tata Motors on Saturday said it has commenced sales of its latest passenger vehicle offering, Sumo Grande, in the domestic market.

Sumo Grande, unveiled at the Auto Expo in January this year, is commercially available from dealerships located in metros and select large cities.

"It will be progressively made available across the country in a phased manner," Head, Product Group, Utility Vehicles, Passenger Car Business Unit, S G Saksena told reporters here.

"It has been specifically designed to satisfy the needs of city customers in the areas of driveability, manoeuvrability and fuel efficiency," Saksena said.

The Sumo Grande range, available in three variants of Lx, Ex and Gx, is priced in the range of Rs 6.53 lakh to Rs 7.48 lakh (ex-showroom, Bangalore), it was stated.

Small cars to cost up to Rs 16k less; two-wheelers cheaper too
1 Mar, 2008, 1015 hrs IST,Nandini Sen Gupta & Lijee Philip............That the Nano is a reflection of the common man’s aspiration is visible in the fact that even the finance minister has chosen to recognise it in the Budget by way of duty cuts on small cars. But small cars apart, automotive has been one of the few sectors that have found this Budget extremely favourable.

The finance minister has cut duty on two- and three-wheelers, besides announcing steep mark-downs for green and hybrid vehicles. Commercial vehicles, too, stand to benefit, thanks to the excise reduction on buses to 12% and trucks to 14%. This will bring down prices by Rs 20,000-Rs 40,000.

“The excise benefits signal the government’s intention to encourage the growth of public transport,” said Ashok Leyland managing director R Seshasayee.

Thanks to a 4% cut in excise duty (from 16% to 12%), small cars will cost Rs 7,000-16,000 less. As for two-wheelers, the price cuts are likely to be modest — around Rs 1,000-Rs 1,300 for executive-class motorcycles like Splendor Plus or Platina, and Rs 1,500-Rs 1,800 for top-end performance products like the Pulsar.

Already, the top players in the small car market — Maruti, Hyundai, GM, Tata Motors — have announced mark-downs. Tata Motors is reducing Indica and Indigo base prices by Rs 13,000, and Maruti by Rs 6,500-Rs 18,000. However, if you are waiting for the Nano to cost less than Rs 1 lakh, keep dreaming.

Power sector sees light at end of tunnel
1 Mar, 2008, 0149 hrs IST,Anto T Joseph & Nevin John..............The power sector has three things to cheer about and one issue to sulk over. A national fund for power transmission and distribution (T&D) , a coal regulator along with a coal distribution policy, and increased budget allocation for rural electrification are all likely to benefit the industry. But imposition of a 4% special countervailing duty on imports for power plants less than 1,000 MW is causing grief.

Finance minister P Chidambaram announced this new duty even as he was cutting duties on imports for other projects to 5% from 7.5%.

The industry, predictably, is crying foul, saying that the move increases their cost at a time when the country desperately needs investment in the sector.

Industry analysts said the proposed national fund for T&D would aim to bridge the huge investment gap in the sector. The proposal for a coal regulator spells relief for generation companies hit by rising fuel prices. This is one of the recommendations of the Hyderabad-based Administrative Staff College and the Shankar Committee on larger coal sector reforms, currently under consideration by the central government, said Union coal secretary HC Gupta.

Said Coal India chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya: “The regulator should also take care of the environmental and social sustainability issues in mining. Rural electrification will pick up pace, too. The FM has allocated Rs 5,500 crore in 2008-09 to light up 5,000 villages across the country, as part of the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY). Villagers below poverty line can get free electricity connections under this scheme.

The new fund outlay will clearly accelerate the setting up of distribution and transmission backbones in many villages. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that it costs Rs 12-Rs15 lakh to set up a distribution backbone in a village.

However, there is one proposal which is unlikely to cheer the power sector. The finance minister has amended service tax rules, which could adversely affect T&D turnkey contractors, says KEC International managing director and CEO Ramesh Chandak. “The service tax applicable on works contracts under the composition scheme for payment has been doubled to 4%. This will affect all engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) players in the industry,” he said.

NTPC ties up with NIB for Rs 410.56 crore loan
27 Feb, 2008, 2158 hrs IST...............MUMBAI: Country's top power generating utility NTPC Ltd has signed an agreement with Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) for loan of Euro 68.56 million (Rs 410.56 crore) to part finance the capital expenditure of its projects.

The agreement was signed on February 15, with the NIB, a multilateral financial institution owned by the Nordic and Baltic countries, the state-run company today said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The loan has a maturity period of 12 years including availability time-frame of 3 years, it said.

The loan carries a floating rate of interest linked to Euribor (Euro Interbank Offered Rate) and is without sovereign guarantee, it said.

The public sector firm has for the first time tied up with NIB for the loan, it added.

Shares of the company closed at Rs 202.35 at the BSE, down 0.76 per cent from the previous close.
NTPC ties up with NIB for 68.5 mn Euro loan

Mumbai, Feb 27 (PTI) Country's top power generating utility NTPC Ltd has signed an agreement with Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) for loan of Euro 68.56 million (Rs 410.56 crore) to part finance the capital expenditure of its projects.

The agreement was signed on February 15, with the NIB, a multilateral financial institution owned by the Nordic and Baltic countries, the state-run company today said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The loan has a maturity period of 12 years including availability time-frame of 3 years, it said.

The loan carries a floating rate of interest linked to Euribor (Euro Interbank Offered Rate) and is without sovereign guarantee, it said.

The public sector firm has for the first time tied up with NIB for the loan, it added.

Shares of the company closed at Rs 202.35 at the BSE, down 0.76 per cent from the previous close.

Microsoft cuts Vista prices to urge upgrades
1 Mar, 2008, 0502 hrs ..............SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it plans to cut prices of its Windows Vista operating system sold at retail outlets in a move aimed at pushing customers to switch to the newest version of Windows.

The world's largest software maker said it plans to lower retail prices for Vista in 70 countries later this year in tandem with the shipment of the first major update to Vista, known as Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Packaged versions of Windows Vista sold at stores and on the Web account for less than 10 percent of all licenses of the dominant Windows operating system that sits on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.

Most consumers opt to buy a new PC, which comes preloaded with the latest version of Windows.

"We anticipate these changed will provide greater opportunities ... to sell more stand-alone copies of Windows," said Brad Brooks, a Microsoft corporate vice president.

In the United States, Microsoft will reduce prices for Windows Vista Ultimate, the company's top-end operating system, to $319 from $399 for the full version and cut the price for an "upgrade" version to $219 from $259 for consumers who already run Windows XP or another edition of Vista.

It also cut prices for upgrade versions of Vista Home Premium, its mainstream product, to $129 from $239. The price cuts vary by country.

In emerging markets, Microsoft will stop selling "upgrade" versions of Vista, because, for many customers, it will be the first purchase of a genuine copy of Windows. The company will instead sell Vista Home Premium and Home Basic, a stripped-down version, at the upgrade prices.

Microsoft has sold more than 100 million licenses of Vista since its January 2007 release and its adoption has underpinned strong earnings results at the company in recent quarters.

Nonetheless, some consumers have raised issues with Vista's performance, stringent hardware requirement and lack of support for other software and devices like printers. Microsoft said it would continue to sell Windows XP until June 2008, delaying a scheduled transition to Vista.

Brooks, who oversees consumer marketing of Vista, said he is confident the company can bring in enough new customers to offset the revenue declines from lowering prices after seeing the results of a recent three-month promotional trial of lower Vista prices.

The announcement comes on the heels of sales data that showed a 30 percent drop in money spent for software at U.S. retailers in January, according to market research firm NPD.

Microsoft said the announcement is unrelated to the sales data, which the company said could be a result of inventory build-up after the holiday shopping season.

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Tata undecided about reducing Nano price

Mumbai, Mar 1: Following the reduction in excise duties in the Union Budget, automobile major Tata Motors has slashed the prices of its Indica and SUV models. However, the company on Saturday said it was undecided about lowering the price of its forthcoming model Nano, already considered the world’s cheapest car at Rs.100,000 (USD 2,500). “It’s too early” to say whether this would have a bearing on the prices of the proposed family car, Tata Nano, expected to hit the market at Rs.100,000, a company spokesperson told agencies.

According to present indications, Nano will be available in the showrooms in the second half of this year.

Among existing models, the prices of the popular Tata Indica car series have been slashed between Rs.8,500-Rs.14,600.

In the commercial light motor vehicle segment where the company has more than 150 models, including Tata Sumo and Safari, the prices have been reduced by two percent across all models.

“We want to pass on the benefits of the excise duty relief to our consumers,” the spokesperson said.

Another auto major Maruti Suzuki has also announced price reductions following the tax cuts.

Budget: What’s cheaper and what’s dearer

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi, Feb 29: Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented the federal budget for 2008-09 on Friday, the fifth and final full one of the administration. Here is the impact of the Budget on the following commodities.

Cheap


Washing Machine


Air Conditioner


Motor Cycle 5% discount


Two wheelers


Hyundai vehicles Rs 12-14000 less


Set Top Box


Dairy Products


Tea and Coffee


Live saving drugs


IT products


Sport Materials


Small Car


Paper and its products


Rates of 3-4 star hotels


Packaged coconut water


Fertiliser


Puffed rice


Shampoo


Hair Oil


Jewellery


Water Puriifier


Naptha

Costly


Mobile (Nokia Express phone, Samsung)


Cigarette


Packaging Software


On ULIP Service Tax will be charged


Bulk cement


Unbranded petrol and diesel