Indian Shares

 Inflation in India rose more than expected in early February to a six month high on rising food prices and fuel prices. Inflation remains below the Indian central bank's target rate of 5% but economists say it could breach that level in the near future"

More info food and fuel.

"The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has raised its forecast for Asian growth, saying that stronger consumer spending will help offset weaker exports." Full Article....

Shareholders in the steelmaker Corus have overwhelmingly voted to accept a £5.75bn takeover offer from Indian firm Tata Steel. More than 97% of its shareholders backed the deal at an extraordinary general meeting, creating the world's fifth-largest steel group. More than  97% of Corus shareholders backed the deal.

• Letter to stock Exchange - Corus Shareholders approve Scheme of Arrangement
• Tata Steel Offer

"No longer is India seen as one of investment's wild frontiers, where you can make big bucks if you take big risks. Increasingly, Western companies are viewing India as a market in which they simply can't afford not to be present."

Source: The Independent

Various news articles are reporting that UK giant Tesco is looking to expand into India with Mahindra & Mahindra rather than the Tata group.

Vodaphone has completed the purchase of 67% of shares in Hutchison Essar, beating off a bid from Reliance Communications. The capture marks a shift in strategy as Vodaphone moves away from the Swiss and Belgian mobile phone markets to emerging economies. The Indian mobile phone market is witnessing fantastic growth at present.

Related Articles:
Vodaphone battling with Essar for Indian Mobile Phone Company
Vodaphone looking to expand in India

Indian software giant Infosys is reporting a 52.4% risein quarterly profits and 47% increase in revenue, on the back of strong outsourcing orders from Western firms. JC Penny recently outsourced to InfoSys as did over 40 more companies this quarter.

Vodafone is reported to be facing competition in its bid for he Hutchison Whampoa from Indian conglomerate Essar, which has 33% of Hutchison Whampoa Mobile Phone business. Unlike Vodophone Essar is not affected by the 74% limit on foreign ownership of Indian mobile phone providers.

More Info.

Vodafone has said it is considering a bid for a majority stake in Hutchison Whampoa's Indian mobile phone business.  Vodafone which already owns 10% of Bharti Airtel, the market leader in India and sees the mobile market in India as having great potential, more so than in Europe. However foreign firms are limited to owning 74% of Indian mobile phone providers.

The main stock market in India for Indian shares closed at a record high today as it passed the 13,000 mark. The SENSEX has risen 36% during 2006 despite a turbulent patch earlier in the year. The rise is attributed to strong earnings from key banks and technology firms like (InfoSys, Wipro, Satyam and TATA Consulting).

"The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has said the Tata Steel-Corus deal is a sign of a confident India Inc and reflects the consolidation of the Indian industry in the global economy.

CII president R Seshasayee said the Tata Steel-Corus deal is a sign of India Inc being recognized as a very significant global economic player."

Source: Zee News

Anglo-Dutch steel firm Corus is reported to be close to accepting a formal £4.1bn ($7.7bn) takeover offer from Indian rival Tata. Corus encompasses what was formally British Steel. Corus is an international company, providing steel and aluminium products and services to customers worldwide with an annual turnover of £9 billion.

TATA Steel formerly TISCO - Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited) is Asia's first and India's largest integrated private sector steel company. Tata Steel produces 4 million tonnes of steel, annually. In 2005 the company was recognised as the world's best steel producer. The company is listed on Mumbai and National Stock Exchanges of India

New research has found that shares in the major India-based IT services providers have vastly outperformed their western rivals so far this year, despite falling sharply in May and starting from valuations based on much higher multiples of earnings and revenues.

Full Article

"India’s overall rank of 43 demonstrates remarkably high scores in capacity for innovation and sophistication of firm operations.This is especially true of the quality of scientific search and the number of scientists and engineers, which are increasingly supplying highly skilled professionals to the private sector. Firm use of technology and rates of technology transfer are high, although penetration rates of the latest technologies are still quite low by international standards, reflecting India’s still low levels of per capita income and high incidence of poverty." - WEF 2006

India recieves a positive but details assessment of it's strengths and weaknesses, whereas the review of China is more critical in the World Economic Forums (WEF) Global Competivitiveness Index Ranking report for 2006.

The affect of India's growing economy and what it means for the US is explored in the main story in Time magazine this week. An interesting read, explaining just how dependant the US is on India and explaining India's potential in the coming years.

Inside the New India Inc. (Time Magazine)
India's influence soars (CNN item promoting Time article)

"Intel's Andy Grove is more blunt. "America ... [is going] down the tubes," he says, "and the worst part is nobody knows it. They're all in denial, patting themselves on the back, as the Titanic heads for the iceberg full speed ahead."  

"China and India are different from all previous competition because their sheer size—2.3 billion people!—means that they have an almost limitless supply of low-skilled labor on the one hand and a fairly large group of highly skilled workers on the other, both extremely cheap by Western standards. No worker from a rich country will ever be able to equal the energy and ambition of people making $5 a day and trying desperately to move out of poverty."

An interesting and thought provoking read: How Long Will America Lead the World? by Fareed Zakaria for Newsweek. Makes you realise why all the Sunday Papers have full page adverts about investing in portfolios in China or India.

The importance of the accuracy of data filed to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) was highlighted a couple of years ago by the cases of Enron and WorldCom. After Sarbanes-Oxley as part of a series of steps to combat this the SEC announced at the end of March that 17 companies would be taking part in a pilto program to use interactive financial data in their filings. Amongst the 17 corportaions named was InfoSys.

The 17 companies taking part in the SEC pilot are:

• 3M Company
• Altria Group
• Brazilian Petroleum Corporation
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
• The Dow Chemical Company
• Gol Intelligent Airlines
• Infosys Technologies Limited
• Microsoft Corporation
• Mobile Reach International
• Net Servicos De Comunicacao SA
• Old Mutual Capital
• Pfizer
• R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
• South Financial Group
• United Technologies Corporation
• Xerox Corporation
• XM Satellite Radio Holdings

 
The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) XML format will be used to submit the data.

At the end of 2005 the BBC published an article highlighting the fact that in 2005 the Indian Stock Market rose by 40% to over 10,000 points. Some analysts are predicting that in 2006 the market will rise to 12,000 points.

Seven weeks into 2006 the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) SENSEX continues to tread water at closing just below the 10,000 mark at 9981 today.