Daily News Roundup - March 28 2012

L&T Finance has agreed to buy Fidelity’s Indian funds, becoming the tenth-biggest equity fund house in a highly fragmented and competitive market marked by wafer-thin profitability. (ET) SBI has raised interest rates on short-term deposits by a percentage point. It would offer 8% on deposits of various maturities below one year, a structure that could nullify the high rates private banks offer. (ET) Debt-laden Kingfisher Airlines has shut 28 of its 56 destinations to which it operated flights over the past two days making at least 40-50% of its staff redundant. (ET) Maruti is planning to cut car production at its Gurgaon plant and has no intentions of completely shifting vehicle production out of the city in the immediate future. (ET) The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons has rejected Reliance Industries argument that geological complexities were preventing the company from drilling more wells to reverse the sharp fall in gas output from the D6 block. (ET) GAIL (India) has set a target of transporting 121.55 mmscmd and market 85.75 mmscmd of natural gas during the financial year 2012-13. (BL) Sadbhav Engineering has emerged as the best bidder for developing a 110km national highway stretch that connects Bijapur and Sholapur in Karnataka- Maharashtra border. (BL) MindTree will open its first major US development centre at Gainesville, Florida which will add about 400 jobs. (BL) Patni Computer Systems has won a 5-year deal from the UK-based mining group Rio Tinto. (BL) Subhash Chandra-led Essel Group bought a 10.2% stake in Hyderabad-based IVRCL to further its interests in infrastructure. (BS) Jindal Steel & Power Ltd plans to raise US$150mn through overseas borrowing in the next two weeks. (BS) Competition Commission of India has approved the proposal of Reliance Infrastructure to merge five of its wholly-owned subsidiaries with itself. It has also approved the demerger of the container business of Reliance Infrastructure Engineers Pvt Ltd from the company. (BS) Tata Steel has paid the entire amount demanded by the state government for distributing compensation among the villagers who gave away their land for company’s mega steel project in Bastar. (BS) Economy Snippets The government will borrow Rs3700bn from the market in the first half of next fiscal. This is 65% of the planned annual borrowing and almost 46% higher than in the last fiscal, making the chances of interest rate cut by the RBI in April slim. (ET) Finance minister said that the proposed GAAR will not harass honest tax payers. These are targeted at tax evaders and the government would not punish genuine foreign investors investing in Indian equities through participatory notes. (FE) The government is set to make it easier for foreign investors to set up businesses that deal in government securities, easing the entry for big-pocket dealers into the near 1000bn G-Sec market. (ET) The finance ministry has directed public sector banks not to relax lending rules for state-owned entities. (ET) Finance minister will provide some relief to the jewellery industry that has been agitating against imposition of excise duty on gold ornaments. He has promised an "acceptable formulation" indicating that the government may not withdraw the levy altogether. (ET)