Tata Sons pledges TCS shares for Docomo deal

Tata Sons pledges TCS shares for Docomo deal

The Tata group’s holding company, Tata Sons, is pledging shares of group companies, including the most valuable firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), to buy out NTT Docomo in Tata Teleservices. This fund-raising exercise is aside from a series of nonconvertible debentures the Tata firm has issued. Tata Sons needs `7200 crore to buy Docomo’s 26.5 per cent stake in loss-making Tata Teleservices. According to the statistics given to stock exchanges, Tata Sons has so far pledged 31.9 million TCS shares worth `7,700 crore. By this, it has created an additional net pledge of TCS shares valued at `1,340 crore in the past six months. The holding company has also raised funds by pledging the shares of Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Tata Power, taking the total to `2,872 crore.

Lupin to set up R&D centres in US

Pharma major Lupin said that it is in the process of setting up two new research and development centres in the US, focusing on research in inhalation and complex formulations. Th e company had also increased research and development spending to `958.28 crore in FY14 as compared to `770.85 crore in FY13. It had invested 8.1 per cent of its net sales in R&D and related spends amounting to `770.85 crore in FY13.

RIL loses appeal against SEBI’s consent denial

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) dismissed an appeal by Reliance Industries (RIL) against market regulator SEBI, which had rejected the company’s plea for a consent proceeding in an insider trading case involving shares of Reliance Petroleum (RPL) in 2007. RPL has since merged with RIL. The SAT order said that after insertion of Section 15JB(4) of the SEBI Act, which was passed with retrospective effect and now bars any appeal against any order under consent proceedings, it had no option but to dismiss RIL’s appeal. The case relates to an alleged act of insider trading in Reliance Petroleum by RIL just before its merger with RIL. SEBI investigations found that RIL had created a short position in RPL and, subsequently, sold about 20 crore shares (4.1 per cent) of RPL in the cash segment. This helped RIL make an “illegal” profit of `513 crore in its short position, and a total profit of `3.8 crore after taking into consideration the losses it took by selling RPL shares in the cash segment. SEBI had sent a show-cause notice to RIL about the alleged insider trading. Subsequent to the show-cause notice, RIL moved a consent application in SEBI which, at that time, had allowed the consenting party to neither accept nor deny any wrongdoing, but pay a fi ne and settle the charges.

M S Mehta is R-Infra’s new CEO

M S Mehta has joined as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure. Lalit Jalan, the earlier CEO has been elevated as Director-Corporate Strategy and Affairs. Mehta was till recently the Group CEO of Vedanta Resources since last five years. Prior to taking over as the Group CEO of Vedanta, Mehta was the CEO of Hindustan Zinc. He transformed the company and led its growth to make it the second largest zinc producer in the world.