upfront

N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman-Designate of Tata Sons, when asked why Indian IT companies did not do well in the products space. He was speaking at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum

UBHL in Trouble

The Karnataka High Court has issued a winding-up order on United Breweries Holdings (UBHL), the company through which Vijay Mallya used to control his business empire. The court asked the liquidator to take over all the assets of the company.

Taj brand consolidation

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) has said that all its hotels will be brought under a single brand - Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris. Under the proposed restructuring, the brands of Vivanta by Taj and Gateway will merge under the aegis of a single Taj brand identity.

Ambassador Changes Hands

Hindustan Motors, a C.K. Birla group firm, has sold the Ambassador brand to European auto major Peugeot for `80 crore. The manufacturing of Ambassador cars has been discontinued for a while now. The PSA Group has entered into a partnership with the C.K. Birla group to re-enter the Indian market and earmarked `700 crore to set up a vehicle and powertrain manufacturing unit in Tamil Nadu.

104

The number of satellites put into orbit by Indian Space Research Organisation on February 15, a world record. This will help India grab a bigger pie of the multi-million-dollar space market.

Buyback Season

TCS has said that it will consider a share buyback on February 20. This is in response to calls by investors that IT companies return excess cash to shareholders. This follows a similar move by Cognizant. Shares of other IT companies such as Infosys that are sitting on huge cash piles reacted positively to the news.

GVK Gets Navi Mumbai Airport

Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), a joint venture led by GVK, has won the bid to build a new airport in Navi Mumbai. The estimated cost is `16,000 crore. Initially, four entities - MIAL, GMR Airports, MIA Infrastructure (a joint venture of Tata Realty and VINCI Airport Concessions) and Voluptas Developers (consortium of Hiranandani Group and Zurich Airports) - had shown interest in building the greenfield airport. The financial bids were submitted by just two - GMR Airports and MIAL.