Round-up: Events of the fortnight

Kingfisher Airlines Chairman Vijay Mallya has reassured employees that the airline will fly by summer with a Rs 650 crore infusion from the UB Group. However, the government may see things differently. Kingfisher Airlines, once India's secondlargest airline, has been grounded since October 2012. The airline has a liability of Rs 7,500 crore.

CORPORATE
After a series of disappointing quarters, IT bellwether Infosys finally delivered some good news, beating Street expectations in the October-December quarter by a wide margin. Net profit during the quarter fell a tad to Rs 2,369 crore or Rs 41.47 a share from Rs 2,372 crore, or Rs 41.51 per share a year earlier. "We continue to gain confidence from a strong pipeline of large deals," said CEO S.D. Shibulal.

• Tax officials "surveyed" handset maker Nokia's plant in Chennai seeking evidence of a possible tax default. The development comes close on the heels of a reminder sent to British telecom major Vodafone by the tax department, seeking taxes on capital gains that arose from its $11.2 billion deal with Hutchison Whampoa in 2007.
• Cash-strapped telecom companies are pulling out all the stops to cover costs and improve margins. Bharti Airtel, India's biggest mobile phone company by revenue and customers, has increased 2G data rates, setting the stage for its closest rivals, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, to follow suit.
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  Ratan Tata
  Ratan Tata, who has just stepped down as the Tata group's head, has said the biggest challenge for Cyrus Mistry, the $100 billion conglomerate's new chairman, will be the country's business environment, which is going to be tougher than during the crisis of 1991. In an interview with Time magazine, Tata said he would have loved to have built a "flatter organisation". Responding to a query on which economies appeared robust, Tata said that he was quite bullish about the US and called Africa the real emerging giant.
• Masaru Tamagawa, President of Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony Corporation's European operations, is looking to replicate Sony India's style of working in Europe by synchronising different verticals for better growth. Tamagawa led the company in India for five years, from 2007.
• Coal India, the world's biggest coal producer, is rubbing shoulders with Goldman Sachs and Shell in the Public Eye Awards for being the worst company in the world in dealing with the environment and human rights. Goldman Sachs is being blamed for its alleged role in ruining the Greek economy while Shell is on the hit list for drilling in the Arctic. The awards are organised by Berne Declaration and Greenpeace.

ECONOMY
Despite dribs of reform measures being shepherded by the finance minister since September last year, worries are mounting on the economy front. Fitch Ratings has warned that India still faces the risk of a sovereign credit rating downgrade. The upcoming Budget will indicate government's commitment to fiscal consolidation, said the ratings agency. Undeterred, the government has brushed aside the warning, saying steps are being taken to address the concerns of ratings agencies. Belying hopes of a turnaround, industrial output contracted 0.1 per cent in November due to a poor showing by the manufacturing and capital goods sector.

Train fares will increase from January 21. Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said the fare hike is expected to yield Rs 6,600 crore over the next year. A journey on a Rajadhani train from Mumbai to Delhi in the fanciest coach (AC 1st class) will now cost Rs 198 more to totalRs 3,555. On the same train, travel in the cheapest coach will cost Rs 203 more, with a ticket price of Rs 1,450. The fares will not be increased when the Railways Budget is presented.

Rs  7.9 trillion Assets managed by mutual funds, touching the highest level in the three years and three months ended December 2012. The country's 44 fund houses together reported a jump of over five per cent in assets under management over the previous quarter, which notched up Rs 7.4trillion.

$8.3 billion The record profit reported by Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of mobile phones and TVs, in quarter ended December. The gains were largely driven by rising demand for Galaxy smartphones. Samsung sold about 62 million smartphones in the quarter, well more than Apple's 45 million.

MARKETS
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that the Cabinet has approved a plan to infuse Rs 12,517 crore in state-run banks. Public sector banks are facing rising non-performing assets and write-offs because of poor lending decisions.

Car sales declined 12.5 per cent in December 2012 to record their steepest fall in four months due to high interest rates and rising fuel prices.

If you are worried about food inflation, here's something for you to chew on. Global food prices fell seven per cent in 2012 from 2011, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Prices fell in December for the third month in a row.

COMING UP

• The second round of spectrum auctions will begin in March, after the Cabinet decides on reducing the reserve price of the 800 MHz band used for CDMA mobile services. The last round of spectrum auctions fetched the exchequer just Rs 9,407 crore, against the expected Rs 28,000 crore.
• The government is likely to come out with an offer to sell a 10 per cent stake in Oil India in the second fortnight of January. This is likely to be followed by NTPC's issue in February.
• Microsoft will retire its Messenger online chat feature on March 15 and replace it with the Skype Internet telephony service it bought last year.