Pragmatic Investments

Date: 30 June 2009

Thought for the day

“Anytime you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something that you’re not.”

– Malcolm X

GENERAL

1)Southwest monsoon on Monday covered entire Madhya Pradesh,  Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and many parts of East Uttar  Pradesh bringing relief to millions of people reeling under intense  heat for the past few days.

Indian Express

ECONOMY

2)THE chairman of PM’s Economic Advisory Council, Suresh Tendulkar, said on Monday the economy would expand by at least 7% during the  current fiscal provided the monsoon does not fail.  He ruled out the  need for pressing the panic button at the moment.

FE

CORPORATE / INDUSTRY

3)Engineering major Larsen & Toubro today said it had bagged six  orders worth Rs 1,230 crore from different vendors.  “The orders would be executed by Electrical & Gulf Projects Operating Company, a part of L&T’s Construction Division,” L&T said in a filing to the BSE.

BS

4)SERIAL entrepreneur Ramesh Vangal’s Kerala Ayurveda is set to  merge with a more illustrious and bigger peer Arya Vaidya Pharmacy  (AVP), creating the world’s largest ayurveda entity, and one of the  largest wellness firms in this part of the world.  A mega consolidation in the wellness domain was set off after the boards of KAL  and the privately-held AVP signed an initial agreement to explore  options to combine their businesses.

ET

MONEY & BANKING

5)Financial services provider Karvy has decided to focus on fast  growing and vastly untapped private wealth management business  by launching a new entity Karvy Private Wealth, a top official said
  on Monday.  The new company would focus on advising and managing wealth of High Networth Individuals(HNIs) and the super  rich.

FE

6)The rupee was flat on Monday in a range-bound market.  The domestic currency opened at 48.06 and strengthened to touch an intra-day high of 47.95.  It weakened to touch an intra-day low
  of 48.26, before closing at 48.10, unchanged from the previous close.

BL

7)UCO Bank may exercise the option of raising Rs 500-600 crore  worth capital through follow-on public offer by the third quarter of 2009-10, according to its Chairman and Managing Director,
  Mr S K Goel.

BL

MARKETS

8)Indian equity closed Monday with marginal gains after witnessing  huge volatility throughout the trading session.  The 30-share Sensex  of Bombay Stock Exchange(BSE) added 21.10 points or 0.14% to end the day at 14,785.74 points. The broader S&P CNX Nifty of National Stock Exchange(NSE) was up by 15.45 points or 0.35% to close  the day at 4,390.95 points.  Dealers in the market said huge selling  was seen in the IT stocks as investor ahead of budget continued to book profit.

FE

9)The lull in the corporate bond market seen in the first quarter  of this fiscal is expected to change after the Budget.  Bankers  and market participants expect more corporate bond issuances
  from the second quarter, given the Government thrust on the infrastructure sector and the likely tax sops.

BL

IPO

10)Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd(MHRIL), a part of Mahindra  Group has set Rs 300 each as the initial public offer(IPO) price for its 92.65 lakh equity shares.  The issue that opened June 23
  and closed June 26 was subscribed 9.8 times as per the company.

FE

11)SHRIRAM Properties, part of the Chennai-headquartered diversified  Shriram Group, has appointed Macquarie and Enam Financial Consultants as advisors in a proposed Rs 500-700 crore initial public offering(IPO).  This could be one of the first realty companies to tap the  tepid IPO market after Emmar MGF withdrew its public issue in February last year in the face of adverse market conditions.

ET

MUTUAL FUNDS

12)EQUITY mutual funds are handing out dividends to investors like  never before.  Fund houses like Franklin Templeton, SBI Mutual,  HDFC MF, Reliance MF, Tata MF and UTI have announced dividends  in the range of 20 to 60% in their bid to encourage investors retain money in existing schemes.

ET

CORPORATE SCORE

13)CORPORATE hospital group Apollo has reported a net profit of Rs  118 crore(including an extraordinary item of Rs 4 crore) for the  year ended March 31,2009, up by 15.6% from Rs 102 crore in the
  previous year.  During the period, it clocked a turnover of Rs  1,458 crore(Rs 1,125 crore).

ET

COMMODITIES

14)Gold rose to $942 an ounce on Monday, clinging to recent rises in  choppy trade as the dollar cut earlier gains with renewed caution  toward riskier assets also proving supportive.  Gold was at $941.90  an ounce at 1059 GMT, up from $938.05 quoted late in New York on   Friday.

BL

15)THE revival of the monsoon pulled down prices of agri commodities  on the commodity exchanges on Monday.  Most of the commodities, including the edible oils complex, spices, wheat and guarseed traded in the red as sentiment for better crop acreage and production gained  ground following favourable climatic conditions.

ET

REAL ESTATE

16)Notwithstanding the concerns over the proposed international air  port in Navi Mumbai, real estate prices around the satellite city  have rising for the past one month. During the past 30 days, prices
  of medium residential apartments rose by Rs 300-500 per square feet  across various nodes in the city.  The present prices range at Rs  2,500-3,000 per square foot across nodes like Kamothe, Panvel,
  Kharghar, Khandeshwar and CDB Belapur, said Srikanth Puduval,  a real estate agent.

BS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

17)TOP outsourcing customers such as Bank of America and several  local governments in the US are asking vendors such as TCS, In fosys and Wipro to deliver more projects locally.  They are also
  rescinding job offers to foreign workers in an attempt to address  anti-offshoring sentiments and cope with legislative requirements  of the Troubled Assets Relief Program(TARP).Bank of America and
  other financial services organisations who have received funds under TARP need to ensure that they try and employ local American  workers before hiring a foreign worker from companies such as TCS,
  Infosys and Wipro.  During the past few months, at least five new  outsourcing contracts had new clauses, which mandated that certain work be delivered onshore.

ET

18)EVEN as protectionism gains ground among political hardliners  in the UK and US, UK-based Lloyds Bank has initiated the process of replacing most its British IT workers with Indian nationals.
  Many of the Indian recruits will be from top-rung Indian IT majors  such as Wipro and TCS, who are also the bank’s vendors, said  two industry officials familiar with the development.

ET

19)COMPETITION to woo recession-hit clients across the world is  forcing IT biggies to reduce their client billing rates, sometimes  as high as 35-40%, though most are still managing to control any
  sharp declines in their topline.  In certain projects, the billing rates  are down to $16 an hour, which, analysts say are the lowest ever  rates. And such rates will continue atleast till Q1 next year, they add.  “We have seen such sustained decrease in pricing in most projects.  I expect this to last until the year end at least,” says Siddhartha Pai, partner and MD, TPI, a global outsourcing advisory firm.

ET

INTERNATIONAL

20)Crude oil and gasoline rose after an attack by Nigerian militants  shut a field operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, cutting output  from Africa’s largest producer.  Crude oil for August delivery
  advanced $1.51, or 2.2 per cent, to $70.67 a barrel at 10:02 a.m  on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

BL

21)EUROPEAN confidence in the economic outlook rose more than  economists forecast in June, adding to signs that record low interest rates and stimulus measures are helping to pull the region
  out of a recession.  An index of executive and consumer sentiment  in the 16 nations that use the euro increased to 73.3, the highest  since November, from a revised 70.2 in May, the European Com-
  mission in Brussels said today.  Economists had forecast an increase to 71 from an initially reported 69.3 in May, according to the median of 24 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.

FE

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE BROWSE THROUGH THE FOLLOWING SITES.

Karvy Consultants Ltd       www.karvy.com
                            www.khojhyderabad.com
                            www.indiacorporateadvisor.com
                            www.karvycomtrade.com (Commodities)
KARVY Global Services Ltd   www.KARVYGlobal.com
KARVY Realty (India) Limited www.karvyrealty.com
Economic Times              www.economictimes.com
The Financial Express       www.financialexpress.com
Business Line               www.businessline.in
Business Standard           www.business-standard.com
The Times of India          www.timesofindia.com
The Hindu                   www.hindu.com
Deccan Chronicle            www.deccan.com
The New Indian Express      www.newindpress.com