Corpus to help underprivileged students access cheap educational loans. The government may increase the education cess in the Budget as part of a plan to create a corpus to provide cheap loans to students from low-income families. This was discussed at a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, TKA Nair, on January 12 [...]

The government today notified two more Special Economic Zones – that of Hexaware and Medicaps — taking the total number of notified zones to 22. Hexaware is setting up an 11 hectare Information Technology SEZ at Siruseri in Tamil Nadu, while Medicaps is establishing a 12.25 hectares IT SEZ at Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The [...]

White House Chairman for Council on Environmental Quality James L Connaughton today said India should reduce its tariffs on imports of environmental goods and services below 15 per cent to facilitate the flow of technology. “India should reduce its tariffs on imports of environmental goods and services from 15 per cent to facilitate the flow [...]

Indian pharma companies that are operating R&D department can now take a breath of relief with this news. The share of drugs would now experience a rise in the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs must be categorized into the group of those that were already licensed into the portfolios of leading global pharmaceutical companies. This would [...]

Developers are planning IPOs well as realty fund with the real estate boom. CIG Realty fund has been successfully launched by the promoter of Unitech Group. The launch is aimed at raising $1.1 billion in the next six months, both from the domestic as well as the international market. The group has already raised Rs.260crore [...]

Intimidated by the loss of revenue due to the tax reform, Germany, Luxembourg & Portugal were set to block it. The requirement of Unanimity to adopt tax measures in the 25-nation bloc and only 20 member states backed its compromise on the value-added tax reform aimed at making it simpler to file returns by the [...]

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of Federal Reserve is still concerned about the inflation and want to make sure that the price hikes don’t make the things worse. Bernanke said that the fed policymakers would be careful about ensuring that the recent pattern of higher readings in core inflation is not maintained. The head of the [...]

BAA, UK airports operator confirmed its approval over £10.3 takeover bid from a consortium. Spain’s Grupo Ferrocvial leads the consortium. Ferrovial offered to pay 950.25 pence per share. The deal included a proposed final dividend of 15.25 pence per share. The board saw this offer as an attractive price for BAA. A consortium led by [...]

The US subsidiary of Glenmark pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Glenmark) has signed a deal with Paul Capital Partners’ Royalty fund, worth $27-million to finance the development of its dermatological portfolio for the US market. The legal advisors of Glenmark in the deal were, DSP Merrill Lynch & Greenberg Traurig LLP. Glen Saldanha, the managing director & CEO [...]

The Bharti Airtel’s new FII investment has hit a roadblock. The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) cannot increase their shareholdings & exposures in the countries largest telecom company, Bharti Airtel until the government allows the company to hike its foreign investment ceiling from 49% to 74%. Currently, FII investment is close to hitting the threshold limit [...]