Tata Steel to pay min bonus of Rs 18K to eligible workers

The minimum bonus for an eligible Tata Steel employee will work out to around Rs 18,000, according to a press release by the company.

While the maximum bonus payable for such employees will be Rs 1,41,343, the minimum will be Rs 17,978, it said. The steel major today announced about Rs 182.47 crore as annual bonus for the year 2011-12 against Rs 171.70 crore paid in the previous year.

According to a memorandum of settlement signed between the management of the steel company and the Tata Workers Union (TWU), the total pay out for 30,270 eligible employees of all applicable division/units of the company would be Rs 182.47 crore approximately as against Rs 171.70 crore paid last year.

Out of this, approximately Rs 105.02 crore would be paid as annual bonus payable to 16,547 employees at the divisions at Jamshedpur, including tubes division, the release said.

Since the majority of the employees of the company were drawing salary and wages higher than the limit laid down in the payment of Bonus Act,1965, they were not eligible for bonus under it, the release added.

However, the company agreed to pay bonus to all employees in the unionised category to respect the tradition, it stated. Tata Steel Managing Director H M Nerurkar and other senior executives signed the agreement on behalf of the management and President of TWU Premanand Singh and other office-bearers signed for the union in the presence of the deputy labour commissioner here.

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Domestic aviation sector may see recovery in Q3: Report

The struggling domestic aviation sector is likely to see a recovery in the third quarter on the back of a stronger domestic currency and temporary shutdown of Kingfisher Airlines , among others, according to a report.

"While we expect weak Q2 results on account of seasonality, we could see a sharper-than-expected recovery in the seasonally strong Q3. "In the near-term domestic airline companies will benefit from an appreciating rupee, temporary shutdown of Kingfisher, capacity discipline and improvement in utilisations and yields due to onset of busy season," a Bank of America Merrill Lynch
report said here today.

Noting that the rupee has appreciated close to 6 per cent to the dollar in the last five weeks, the report said the appreciating rupee will also have an indirect impact through the prices of domestic fuel. On the temporary shutdown of Kingfisher, it said, "Kingfisher has temporarily shutdown its operation to
negotiate with the workers. This is another marginal positive for the remaining carriers as this further consolidates the industry and eases supply prior to the busy season."

"Additionally, the show-cause notice by the regulator further puts a question mark on Kingfisher's return. We do not expect Kingfisher to normalise its operations in the near term," it added.

The report also said it does not expect any significant capacity addition in the near-term. "Despite Kingfisher's temporary shutdown none of the
carriers are rushing to add capacity. Domestic carriers are not renewing the expired leases and also sub-leasing aircrafts to keep the capacity under check.

"As per its channel checks, over the next three months, the agency expects an addition of five to six aircraft, most of which will be utilised in the underserved international routes," it said. It further said it expects Jet Airways and SpiceJet to post substantially lower losses in FY13 and strong profits in
FY14 due to strong yield recovery in the domestic segment and route rationalisation in the international segment. 

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Maruti Suzuki halves growth forecast for FY13 to 5%

Maruti Suzuki has cut its growth forecast for FY13 from 10% to just 5%, reports Ronojoy Banerjee of CNBC-TV18.  

Maruti Suzuki, chairman RC Bhargava said that they are looking at expanding diesel capacity earlier than planned. Bhargava also hinted that the company may expand its capacity in Gurgaon and is also mulling a new engine plant in Gujarat.

"If the diesel disparity and demand for diesel continues then we have to go for expansion. The market share of diesel cars this year has risen to 58 percent, it was 47 percent last year and 36 percent a year before that. I think the share will be over 60 percent by the end of this year," says Bhargava

If this trend continues then what is the option? We can also look at other places including Gujarat for setting up a plant; it all depends on the Gujarat product mix. We expect a growth of around 5-5.5 percent, which means in the second half of this year we will have to grow at about 10-11 percent, 10 percent at least.

 

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Lenders will do everything possible to recover KFA dues:SBI

Lead lender to Kingfisher Airlines SBI today said banks would do everything possible to recover their money. "We will do whatever is appropriate in the best interest of the group of banks," State Bank of India (SBI) managing director, mid-corporates, S Vishwanathan told reporters here.

He said every effort would be made at recovering the maximum amount "by all possible methods" which includes letting the company run again, winding up the company, sale of assets or sale of the company itself. When asked whether the airline, which has been on a partial lockout since the past fortnight, can fly again, Vishwanathan, quipped "that is one of the alternatives."

SBI is the largest lender to the near-bankrupt airline with an NPA exposure of Rs 1,580 crore and the interest which has not been serviced since January. Banks, which declared Kingfisher as a non-performing asset in January this year, gave a succour to the carrier in the face of the employee strike by agreeing to release around Rs 60 crore last week from an escrow account.

The banks have, however, flatly refused the airline's request for fresh loans and asked it to come up with a revival plan by end of October and the future strategies will depend on that, Vishwanathan said today. Last week, the aviation regulator DGCA had slapped a show-cause notice to the otherwise flamboyant liquor baron Vijay Mallya-promoted airline threatening to revoke its flying licence due to continuing strike by its employees.

Vishwanathan, who was earlier heading SBI Caps, which was preparing turnaround plan for Kingfisher, was moved back to the bank as a deputy managing director and last week he was promoted as the managing director for mid-corporates at SBI. Mallya, who is also the promoter chairman of the liquor giants United Spirits and United Breweries , is desperately trying to raise funds to save Kingfisher Airlines. Kingfisher, which was till last year the No 2 airline, is down to the last slot in market share and has not posted profits since its launch in May 2005. 

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See no asset quality concern, says IndusInd MD

Saikat Das
moneycontrol.com

Private sector lender IndusInd Bank expects to grow its business in the range of 25-30%. However, its core focus remains on basic banking of lending and deposits. According to Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO of the bank, it does not face any threat of asset quality. Both the corporate and retail loan books are not causing any worry.

In an exclusive interview to moneycontrol.com on the sidelines of its quarterly (July-September) result announcement , he spoke of increasing the share of current account and saving account (CASA) ratio, the cheap source of funds for a bank, to 30-35% (currently at around 28%). At the same time, it plans to reduce portion of bulk deposits from 50% to 30%.

Here is an edited excerpt:

Q. After a series of reform measures by the government, do you see any kind of uptick in lending?

A. It is too early to say it an uptick. Retail lending has not gone down at all barring some exceptions. Long term retail players have seen improvement in their market share.

However, some sectors including power, real estate, construction and infrastructure have certainly slowed down. Risk aversion has risen there.

If you are a long term lender, you don't start off lending next day. There are three factors to it: liquidity, interest rate and then risk aversion. So, there has to be liquidity, interest rates are ready to fall and then risk aversion has to go away. Risk aversion is the function of what you have in your book. So if you have a bad book, then you are risk averse. We are expecting a loan growth in the range of 25-30% in FY13.

Q. Are you planning to cut interest rates?

A. If there is a rate cut signal from the RBI, we will cut the base rate (the benchmark rate below which a bank is not allowed to lend). Moreover,   a cut in the cash reserve ratio (the portion of deposits banks are mandated to keep with RBI) is more of a liquidity signal.  The benefit of CRR cut for players like us is very marginal. To the system,  it is decent. But a rate cut signal cannot be ignored.

Q. The ratio between retail and coporate loans stands at 52:48 at the bank. Will the same proposition continue?

A. It will be broadly in that range. Essentially, it will be 50:50 with 5% movement up and down. We are all right with both the books. The loan book quality does not worry us. Book quality is not pushing us towards retail but yields are pushing up. Our domain expertise too supports us for retail. We have strong domain expertise for vehicle finance and we dominate in this sector. We have registered over 40% year-on-year growth on vehicle finance.

Q. Do you plan to slash your savings deposit rates?

A. There is a linkage between savings and fixed deposit rates. I would say that you link it to one year fixed deposit rate. Saving bank accounts are for longer tenure. They are almost perpetual in that sense. If longer term fixed deposit rates fall, the difference between one year deposit and present savings bank rates narrows. Then it makes a case for a cut in savings deposit rate.

Today the difference is almost 300 bps. If this difference narrows to 100 bps then you reduce savings bank rate because then the cost of savings bank will be higher than the fixed deposit rate.

Q. How do you propose to bring down your bulk deposits, expensive for banks?

A. It has come down from the peak when the management change had taken place in March 2008. Our CASA ratio was 13% then. There were hardly any retail deposits. The share of bulk deposits were at 80-85%. We have already brought it down to 50% over last four years.

This will go down further but it will not vanish. So, bulk deposits will go down to 30-35% while my CASA will reach 30-35% as against 27.98 currently. The retail deposits (besides CASA) will increase its share to 30%, so that the rest 30-35% (100-30+30) will remain as bulk. It will happen over next two three years. We call it a bulk deposit when the amount is Rs 5 lakh or above.

Q. Are you in favour of abolishing CRR?

A. Well, this cash reserve or statutory ratios are one of the strong points of Indian banking. The rest of the world has of late, realized its importance. We have CRR and Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR, the portion of deposits banks are required to invest in government securities). Now, the western world is talking about creating such reserves.

The question is how much can you determine. Whether the total of CRR or SLR should 30% or 25% can be debated. But I would imagine, some sort of statutory reserves should be maintained. I don't think, interest on CRR be it 3% or 4% is a big driver. CRR is a partly liquidity management tool but essentially it is a reserve creation. The concept of abolishing reserve, I don't really prescribe it. How much reserve it is necessary for the health of the system is a matter of debate.

Q. What are your capital raising plans?

A. To support our growth, we are planning to raise capital this year only (2012-13). We will raise equity capital in such a manner so that we need not to go the market next three years. The quantum of funds, I cannot tell you unless the board finalizes it.

We are constantly engaged with the board. As we get a green signal from the board, we will do an equity issue. Timing is important as to when should we do and are the markets ripe for that? We are engaged with the investment bankers on this issue to determine the timing. We have already the overriding enablement from the last AGM. Our tier one capital adequacy ratio is above 11%. We don't want to fall below 10%.

Q. Do you plan to float any subsidiary arm?

A. We have no plans for subsidiaries. Our basic business model is banking (deposit and lending or branch banking) but no para banking. However, we do third party sales of mutual funds and insurance. We had acquired a credit card portfolio a year back. It is running very profitably. It is generating around Rs 3 or 4 crore profit every month. This is the only unsecured part of the book. It stands around Rs 303 crore outstanding compared with our total loan book of Rs 39,427 crore.

saikat.das@network18online.com

 

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Ikea may create new product range for Indian market

Swedish retailer Ikea, which recently announced Rs 10,500 crore investment in the country, today said it is considering to create a new product range for the Indian customers.

"May be we need to develop new functions and a product range which we don't have yet, for this market. Maybe we need to tweak the style but will never compromise with price. We will make affordable products," Ikea India Country Manager Juvencio Maeztu said at the India Retail Forum here.

The Swedish home décor firm, the world's largest furniture maker, in June announced 1.5 billion euros (Rs 10,500 crore) investment in India.

"We don't know yet what our plan is. There are many questions to be solved. Design is not a good friend of price and many times price is not a good friend of quality. It's extremely important for us to combine these three things together for our future here," he said, adding that the firm is still trying to understand the market here.

However, the 69-year old global company is sure that it will hawk its products cheaply, something that the brand is well-known for.

"We are obsessed with low prices," he said, adding that globally the company operates large format stores and will continue to do so here as well.

"India is an excellent place for us to develop a good product with our approach. Our goal is to have a long-term approach here and that too in a holistic way. Combining the trend and the sourcing, so we need time," he said.

Ikea had submitted a formal proposal to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board on June 23 to set up a 100 per cent subsidiary here, only the second retailer to do so after England-based footwear firm Pavers. It plans to open 25 stores across various cities.

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Eligible for grant of Maharatna status: BHEL

Power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) today said it has become eligible for grant of Maharatna status. At present, BHEL is a Navratna PSU. The coveted status will provide more financial autonomy to the company.

During 2011-12, state-run BHEL registered turnover of Rs 49,510 crore, net worth of Rs 25,373 crore and raked in net profit of Rs 7,040 crore, the company said in a statement.

"Significantly with this, BHEL has become eligible for Maharatna status," it said. A company qualifying for the Maharatna tag should have an average annual turnover of more than Rs 25,000 crore in the last three years, according to the guidelines.

Among other requirements, the PSU must have a net worth of over Rs 15,000 crore and net profit of more than Rs 5,000 crore during the last three years.

Once a company gets the Maharatna status, its board would not be required to take the government's permission for investments up to Rs 5,000 crore in a joint venture project or wholly-owned subsidiary. For the Navratna PSUs, this limit is Rs 1,000 crore.

At present, there are five Maharatna companies ONGC , Indian Oil , SAIL , NTPC and CIL and 16 Navratna companies, including Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, NMDC and GAIL . The government had announced the Maharatna status in December, 2009 to give more operational freedom to the top performing PSUs.

Meanwhile, state-run BHEL said it has paid its highest equity dividend of Rs 1,567 crore to its shareholders including the government for 2011-12, the statement said. A cheque of Rs 609.98 crore towards the final dividend for the year 2011-12 was presented to Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Praful Patel.

The cheque was given by BHEL Chairman and Managing Director B P Rao. Besides, the company had paid an interim dividend of Rs 405.85 crore to the ministry. Further, the company said, with an order book position of around Rs 1.33 lakh crore at the end of the first quarter of the current fiscal, it expects to achieve robust growth in 2012-13 and beyond.

BHEL has also established the capability to deliver power plant equipment of 20,000 MW per annum, it added.

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Litigation will force govt, regulator to probe DLF: Tulsian

Stock analyst SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com explains to CNBC-TV18 that controversies have always surrounded DLF and that is why its share-value has considerably eroded. Tulsian adds that litigation would force the court to direct the government and the regulatory authorities to probe affairs of the company.

Below is an edited transcript of the analysis on CNBC-TV18.

Q: What does it really mean for DLF's shareholders?

A: The overhang will definitely remain. So yes, there are lot of controversies and one big controversy which I will add here is also the merger of DAL Assets, which was again the company having created by the group for their personal benefit which when it did not succeed, they dumped it into DLF.

This has ceased to surprise the shareholders and that why the value has eroded. At one point of time, the company enjoyed a market cap of maybe a Rs 100,000 crore or maybe more than that, and now it is ruling at a market cap of Rs 38,000 crore.

It is surprising that even the independent directors have expressed ignorance about the Rs 65 crore interest-free loan having been given. So, yes the problem of corporate governance has again resurfaced.

But I think that this time, the resurfacing of the old problems and the legal action are sure be a major problem for DLF in the time to come.

Q: The government so far has ruled out any possibility of an income tax probe on Kejriwal's suggestion. But do you believe that it is time for the market regulator to suo moto look into this matter?

A: I am not aware of regulatory authorities taking suo moto action because close family members of the ruling party is involved. But it is certain that there will be public interest litigations that will force the court to direct the government as well the regulatory authorities.

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Kenapa Perempuan Bosan Kerja

Kenapa Perempuan Bosan Kerja JIKA akhir-akhir ini Anda merasa suka sekali mengunyah cokelat atau camilan lainnya, mungkin sudah saatnya Anda mencari pekerjaan lain.

Kenapa? Sebuah studi di Finlandia menemukan bahwa perempuan yang berlebihan bekerja, bosan, atau merasa buntu dan muak dengan karier mereka lebih mungkin untuk menemukan hal yang menghibur melalui makanan.

Studi ini juga menemukan bahwa perempuan yang merasa terbebani dengan pekerjaan lebih 'emosional' dalam kebiasaan makan, menurut American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Nina Nevanpera, dari Institut Kesehatan Kerja Finlandia, yang memimpin studi itu, mengatakan, "Mereka yang mengalami kelelahan mungkin lebih rentan terhadap perilaku makan emosional dan makan yang tidak terkendali."

"Rekomendasi kami, hal pertama yang mesti ditangani adalah kejenuhan kemudian mengevaluasi perilaku makan dalam pengobatan obesitas," tambah Nevanpera, menurut Daily Mail.

Temuan ini didasarkan survei terhadap pada 230 perempuan berusia 30 sampai 55 tahun yang mengambil bagian dalam percobaan klinis guna melihat perubahan gaya hidup sehat. Semua partisipan adalah perempuan bekerja.

Secara keseluruhan, 22 persen perempuan mengalami kelelahan dalam bekerja. Dalam kelompok, saat diukur, mereka memiliki tingkat emotional eating dan makan tidak terkendali yang lebih tinggi.

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Mencicipi Kelezatan Mi Gondangdia

Sejak dahulu, Menteng, Jakarta Pusat dikenal sebagai kawasan elit. Kawasan ini beken sebagai tempat nongkrong para remaja berduit. Kini, kawasan ini menjadi surga wisata kuliner. Dan Mi Gondangdia adalah salah satu tempat makan yang menjadi ikon kuliner kawasan Menteng.

Banyak yang bilang Mi Gondangdia adalah minya anak Menteng. Mi ini sering juga disebut mi Godila atau Gondangdia Lama, sesuai nama jalan sebelum berganti nama menjadi Jalan RP Soeroso. Pendirinya adalah Toe Wah Seng yang memulai usaha rumah makan ini sejak 1968. Saat ini kedai mi ini dikelola oleh generasi ketiga, yaitu Rino Chandika.

Hingga sekarang, Mi Gondangdia tetap mempertahankan tampilannya berupa warung sederhana dengan cat hijau tua. Kehadirannya menguak kembali nuansa tempo doeloe di kawasan perumahan elit yang kini sudah berganti rupa menjadi perkantoran.

Mencicipi Kelezatan Mi Gondangdia Menu andalan di kedai ini adalah mi ayam. Walaupun menyediakan menu lainnya, pengunjung tetap mencari mi ayam untuk mencicipi rasanya yang tersohor.

Mi ayam pangsit berisi dua pangsit basah, daging ayam cincang, dan bakso sapi. Ketika menyantap mi ini, memang terasa perbedaannya dengan mi yang ditawarkan tempat lain. Tekstur minya lebih lembut dan kenyal. Disajikan dengan paduan bumbu rahasia tiga generasi yang membuat mi ini ueenaaak!

Menurut Rino, kebanyakan pengunjung yang datang adalah mereka sudah jadi langganan sejak kedai ini pertama kali buka. Biasanya mereka datang bersama keluarga atau anak-anaknya, sehingga kelezatan Mi Gondangdia tersiar turun temurun. Hingga Mi Gondangdia pun popular di kalangan anak muda.

Banyak juga orang-orang tua yang datang bersama teman-teman lamanya untuk sekadar mengenang masa muda. Suasana penuh nostalgia yang ditawarkan di warung mi ini membuat eksistensinya belum tertandingi meskipun sudah banyak tempat makan baru dan modern yang menawarkan suasana cozy.

Kini, bersama keempat adiknya, Rino melebarkan sayap Mi Gondangdia hingga memiliki banyak cabang antara lain di Gedung Menara Kebon Sirih, Pulogadung Trade Center, WTC Mangga Dua, Mal Daan Mogot, Alfa Pasar Minggu, dan Mal Taman Palem Cengkareng.

Tapi jika ingin merasakan suasana aslinya, datanglah ke kedai original yang ada di Menteng. Begitu melahap mi ini, kelezatan legendaris ada di ujung lidah Anda Mencicipi Kelezatan Mi Gondangdia

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