Top corporate news of the day - January 05, 2015

Tata Chemicals Limited which is set to launch the Rs.500mn nutraceuticals manufacturing facility shortly plans to introduce retail products in this category in future.

Indian Oil Corporation is confident of meeting the Tamil Nadu government’s guidelines on pipeline alignment to be able to complete on schedule the Rs.51.5bn LNG import terminal planned to the north of Chennai.

Confident about further growth in its mutual fund and securities market businesses, Reliance Capitalexpects a boost in its life insurance business as well in 2015.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited has signed up with the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited for supply of fuel flexible supercritical boilers for projects coming up in Telangana.

SAIL’s Burnpur plant commissions continuous casting unit.

Tata Steel resumes operations at Noamundi mine after a more-than-three-month stoppage, a move that will help lower its reliance on costlier imports of the raw material.

Cyient has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a 74% equity stake in Mysore headquartered electronics system design and manufacturing services firm Rangsons Electronics Private Limited, in an-all cash transaction and for an undisclosed sum.

Central Bank of India is in the process of raising Rs.6600mn through conversion of perpetual non-cumulative preference shares held by the government into equity shares.

Titagarh Wagons is looking to tap the African and MENA regions as it eyes nearly two fold increase in exports to about Rs.1200mn by FY16.

Top economic news of the day - January 05, 2015

Brushing aside criticism against changes in land acquisition laws, Finance Minister said the amendments would ensure higher compensation to land owners while fulfilling developmental needs of the nation. The government will soon come out with guidelines to set up online agri-platformsto promote hassle-free sale of farm produce and thereby help farmers get good returns. The first meeting of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board this year, to be held on January 22, will see 36 FDI proposals being considered.  Faced with liquidity crunch to clear urea subsidy bills, the Fertilizer Ministry has sought about Rs.125bn from the Finance Ministry for making subsidy payments to domestic manufacturers.  

Nifty above 8,400 levels

At 9:19AM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 27,973 up 85 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 8,420 up 25 points.

The BSE Mid-cap Index and BSE Small-cap Index was trading up at 1%.

Auto, Consumer Durables, Power, banking, capital goods, healthcare, metal, FMCG, PSUs indices are the gainers, while Realty and Oil and gas indices are losers.

GAIL, BHEL, COALINDIA,SUNPHARMA,TATASTEEL, Reliance, Hindalco are among the gainers, whereas HDFC Bank, Infosys, Axis Bank, HUL are losing sheen on BSE.

FII activity will be closely eyed considering that they brought in a little over Rs. 2,100 crore in Indian market in December. This is its lowest investment in 10 months. The total investment by FIIs for 2014 was ~ Rs. 98,000 crore.

The government may ask public sector banks to each form a separate holding company to hold its stake as well as the banks' stakes in their various subsidiaries, a report stated.

The BSE has increased the tick size of stocks and Sensex futures. Stocks only listed on the BSE quoting between a price range of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 will see minimum rise and fall in price of Rs 0.25 instead of the current Rs 0.10, a report stated.

Meanwhile, the BSE has decided to transfer scrips of ~45 companies to the restricted trading segment from January 6. These include companies like White Diamond Industries, South Asian Enterprises, Adi Rasayan and Chambal Breweries & Distilleries Ltd.

Corporation Bank has reportedly invited bids for its proposal to issue unsecured non-convertible (Basel III compliant) additional tier-1 perpetual bond in the nature of debentures.

Arvind Panagariya is likely to be appointed Vice Chairman of the revamped Planning Commission, which has been named NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog, according to reports. Report said that the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog will be given Cabinet rank.