TANMAY OBSERVES!

News Update (03-05-2009):-
Investors may soon have Rs 25,000 crore in hand to buy shares, real estate and gold, thanks to the redemption of fixed maturity plans (FMPs), a kind of close-ended mutual funds, in the first quarter of the current fiscal. According to the data provided by Value Research India, a firm tracking mutual funds in India, more than Rs 10,000 crore is going to come into the hands of investors in the next two months, which is currently locked up in the FMPs. Also, Rs 16,492 crore worth of FMPs had already matured in April alone.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Rs-25000-crore-coming-to-investors-soon/articleshow/4476912.cms

Life Insurance Corporation of India appears to have taken a shine to investing in Indian banks in financial year 2008-09. India’s largest life insurer’s investment pattern in bank stocks indicates that it, to an extent, acted as a counterbalance to foreign institutional investors who were relentlessly hitting the sell button in the Indian market to salvage their investments in the wake of the sub-prime crisis in the US and elsewhere.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/05/03/stories/2009050351190100.htm

Corporation Bank proposes to raise Rs 500 crore to augment its Upper Tier-II capital by issuing unsecured redeemable non convertible subordinated upper Tier-II bonds in the nature of promissory notes. The face value of the bond issue is Rs 10 lakh per bond with a tenor of 15 years.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/corporation-bank-to-raise-rs-500-crore/60281/on

Cement manufacturer ACC has said that it has no plans to increase the prices of the commodity in Delhi, even as it clarified that it has not increased the prices in the capital.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/acc-has-no-plans-to-increase-cement-prices/60282/on

Warren Buffett dismissed the importance of the government’s stress tests of major US financial institutions in helping him assess banks he invested in. “I think I know their future, frankly, better than somebody that comes in to take a look,” Buffett said before the start of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting today. “They may be using more of a checklist type approach.”
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/stress-tests-wont-influence-investment-decisions-buffett/356908/

With companies curtailing their expansion plans and people cutting down expenses, the premium income of the general insurance industry went up by 9.09 per cent to Rs 30,601 crore in FY09 against Rs 28,051 crore collected in FY08.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/general-insurers-see-9-rise-in-premium/356907/

India’s exports fell the most on record in March, extending the longest declining streak in a decade as the worst global recession since World War II damped demand for the nation’s products. Merchandise shipments dropped 33% from a year earlier to $11.5 billion last month, the government said. That was the biggest fall since at least April 1995, when Bloomberg data began. Exports slid 21.7% in February.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=ajxRZnOaLC6Y&refer=india

DLF Ltd. reported a record 93% decline in fourth-quarter profit, as demand for homes, offices and shops fell following an economic slowdown.
Net income fell to 1.59 billion rupees ($32 million) in the three months ended March 31, from 21.8 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said in a release. The profit was lower than the 3.13 billion rupee median estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=axw3TnqPKZqU&refer=india

DLF Ltd, the country’s largest real estate developer, plans to raise Rs 5,500 crore through the sale of non-core assets such as power units and hotels to help it reduce its debt. In addition, it is banking on another Rs 2,000 crore of additional inflows from group company DLF Assets (DAL), the company said in a presentation to analysts.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/dlf-targets-rs-5500-croreasset-sale/356927/

Suzlon Energy Ltd. paid 30 million euros ($40 million) to Martifer SGPS SA as part payment for a stake in a German unit, the Portuguese company said in a statement on its Web site. Suzlon needs to pay the remaining 175 million euros this month to complete the purchase of the 22.4 percent stake in REpower Systems AG, Martifer said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=awX1EQMD8kko&refer=india

Taking benefit of the abundant liquidity, State Bank of India has reduced the interest rate on domestic term deposits by 25 basis points across maturities. “There is lot of liquidity, while credit off-take remains subdued. This has provided us the opportunity to revise deposit rates,” a top SBI executive said. While the new rates will be effective May 4, this is the second time in three weeks that the public sector lender has lowered deposit rates. On April 13, it had lowered term deposit rates by 25-50 basis points across maturities.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sbi-cuts-deposit-rates-by-25-bps/356929/

Government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on the action taken by it on the issue of black money stashed in foreign banks. The affidavit was filed in response to a PIL filed by former Law Minister and eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani and five others who have been seeking a direction for the government to take action to bring back money to the tune of Rs 70 lakh crore stashed in foreign banks.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/govt-files-affidavitblack-money/60219/on

Drug manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories on Saturday said it has recalled all lots of Nitrofurantoin capsules, used in the treatment of infections. In a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Ranbaxy Labs said Ranbaxy Pharmaceutical Inc (RPI), a wholly-owned US subsidiary, has recalled all lots of Nitrofurantoin (Monohydrate/Macrocrystals) capsules, United States Pharmacopeia (USP) 100 mg, available in the market there.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blnus/02021301.htm

The first case of swine flu was confirmed in Asia as health experts said the world appeared better prepared to fight an epidemic now than a few years ago and vowed a vaccine was only months away. Confirmation by Hong Kong authorities that a traveller who arrived from Mexico, via Shanghai, had tested positive for A(H1N1) flu virus saw an entire hotel quarantined. And the news sent shivers through the territory that was at the center of the 2003 S ARS crisis, with Beijing responding swiftly by suspending flights from Mexico to Shanghai, China's state media reported today.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blnus/10021015.htm

The World Health Organization may designate the outbreak of H1N1 influenza as a pandemic by raising its six-stage alert level to its highest step even as many cases of swine flu show symptoms no more severe than seasonal flu, health officials said. The WHO isn’t seeing sustained community transmission of the virus, known formally as influenza A H1N1, outside of North America, said Michael Ryan, the WHO’s director of global alert and response, at a news conference yesterday in Geneva where the UN health agency is based.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8eran5FGYrg&refer=home

Unemployment in the U.S. probably climbed in April to a 25-year high, showing the labor market will be one of the last areas to emerge from the worst recession in at least 50 years, economists said before reports this week. The jobless rate jumped to 8.9 percent last month from 8.5 percent in March and employers cut at least 600,000 workers from payrolls for a fifth straight time, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of a May 8 Labor Department report. Other figures may show service industries shrank at a slower pace.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZiRhLBelglc&refer=home

What is the New Pension System (NPS)?
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Personal-Finance/Know-about-New-Pension-System/articleshow/4473842.cms

(Collected by: Tanmay G Purohit)