NEW DELHI, July 27:  Tech giant Google is offering a prize of USD one million (about Rs 6 crore) for building a compact solution for transforming renewable energy into a power source that can be used at home.
Google, along with Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), has started a ‘Little Box Challenge’ to design and build a kW-scale power inverter, a device used to convert renewable energy, including solar and wind, before transforming it into suitable current for home and vehicles.
The challenge is that the new device has to be of the size of a small laptop, roughly 1/10th of the current size.
“We are looking for someone to build a kW-scale inverter with a power density greater than 50W per cubic inch. Do it best and we will give you a million bucks,” Google said in a blogpost.
Google believes that this will help “change the future of electricity”.
“We believe that inverters will become increasingly important to our economy and environment as solar PV, batteries, and similar power sources continue their rapid growth,” Google said.
It added that the innovation coming in will have wide applicability across areas, will increase efficiency, drive down costs and open up new use cases.
Google said making the power inverter smaller would enable more solar-powered homes, more efficiently distributed electrical grids, and could help bring electricity to the most remote parts of the planet.
“A smaller inverter could help create low-cost microgrids in remote parts of the world. Or allow you to keep the lights on during a blackout via your electric car’s battery. Or enable advances we haven’t even thought of yet,” Eric Raymond from Google’s Green Team wrote.
The last date for registration is September 30, 2014, while the grand prize winner will be announced in January 2016. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, July 27:  Capital market regulators worldwide are increasingly using social media sites for their supervisory activities as well as for gathering general information, says a global report.
Though social media adoption is yet to catch up in many parts of the world, the findings by global grouping of capital market watchdogs IOSCO has found that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are being used more by them.
“Increasingly, regulators are using social media sites in conducting their supervisory activities of firms to identify personal relationships between parties and as a source of general information,” IOSCO said.
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) is a global grouping of capital markets regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), in different countries.
Going by findings, the most commonly used social media sites by the regulators are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Interestingly, IOSCO noted that regulators have neither defined the term social media, nor prohibited its use by intermediary firms.
“The use of social media by intermediaries is in its nascent stages, but across the globe, firms permitting its use prohibit their staff from making recommendations or providing investment advice,” the report.
The observations are part of ‘Report on the IOSCO Social Media and Automation of Advice Tools Surveys’ released recently. It has been prepared after taking into consideration four surveys including one to regulators addressing the supervision of social media.
Nearly 200 intermediaries and 21 regulators from 20 jurisdictions participated in the surveys.
Noting that social media presents regulators with numerous challenges, IOSCO said widespread use of social media for business communications, such as blogs and social networking sites, has impacted how market intermediaries interact with investors.
According to IOSCO, another cause for concern is the growing use of personal mobile devices by employees of intermediaries to access business applications and to engage in business communications with customers.
“This trend highlights the need for both market intermediaries and regulators to be able to identify and distinguish communications that are subject to securities regulation from personal communications,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Sebi has put in place new software tools to help in its investigations and surveillance activities.
The new tools would help the watchdog in keeping a close watch on possible manipulative activities in the stock markets by monitoring suspicious trades as also by analysing the information available in the public domain such as on social media and other Internet platforms. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, July 27:  In a fresh possible headache for regulators, including in India, ‘gold for bitcoin’ trades are emerging as a new fad in the world of anonymous transactions, fuelling further the appetite for virtual currencies.
This comes at a time when the count of virtual currencies available in the market is fast moving closer to the 500-mark, although the price of top-ranked bitcoin has begun showing signs of stability at around USD 500-600 level after remaining highly volatile for most part of its half a decade existence.
According to bitcoin traders, the stabilisation in bitcoin rates is making the case stronger for exchanging them for gold that currently trades at less than USD 1,300 per ounce or about Rs 28,000 per 10 grams in India.
Bitcoins, which command about USD 8 billion in market value, have stumbled from one controversy to another as the unregulated currency is prone to misuse and its links to gold trades could be another.
Some firms and traders have begun aggressively selling bitcoins in exchange of gold, while new websites and portals are cropping up almost every day to cash in on this new frenzy, according to industry players.
Besides, bitcoin industry is looking at India and China in a big way as both these populous nations have a long history with gold and consume hundreds of tonnes of the precious metal every year.
‘Gold for bitcoin’ trades can also facilitate additional virtual demand for both the assets, compounding the woes of befuddled regulators, which are already finding it difficult to rein in bubbles created by gold, while the yellow metal is also being used extensively for black money transactions.
While countries and financial watchdogs have tightened the screws on bitcoin industry, especially after a series of debacles, including Silk Road episode, the failure of Mt Gox exchange and persistent money laundering charges, the gold for bitcoin trades could have wider implications.
“Both the assets need to be ‘mined’. One physically and the other one electronically. They are also limited in nature. Also, both of them threaten the paper money system as alternatives. Besides, black money can be kept in both or change hands as per convenience,” says a bitcoin trader.
The market places for digital currencies have grown at an exponential rate with over 1,400 platforms online alone. Thanks to low transaction cost and difficult to trace nature of transactions, bitcoins are also being accepted by traditional small and big businesses.
While India is yet to put in place any separate guidelines for bitcoins and other virtual currencies, RBI has already warned against their use due to potential risks associated with such transactions. (PTI)

MUMBAI, July 27:  With Bharti Airtel, ONGC Videsh, Tata Steel and SBI hitting the overseas bond markets with USD 1-billion-plus issues, debt raised by 15 domestic companies so far this year is sniffing at the record USD 16.5 billion India Inc had raised in the entire 2013.
Overseas bond sales have touched USD 14.7 billion till date this year, according to the data collated by Deutsche Bank India, which was part of 15 out of the 28 issues by 15-odd companies.
Last year domestic companies had mopped up USD 16.5 billion, up 65 per cent from 2012.
Other merchant bankers are also very bullish about a hefty fee income this year as they see this calendar year to be on course to set new record, thanks to high domestic interest rates and the low interest regime outside, coupled with the sentiment revival in the country post the elections. However, most of the money being raised to repay/refinance these companies high debt burden.
On an average companies gain an interest arbitrage of 500-600 basis points by raising funds overseas, say the merchant bankers.
This spike in international debt raising is happening despite the Reserve Bank putting breaks on companies going to the ECB route in an unbridled manner.
Leading the pack this year is Sunil Bharti-led Bharti Airtel which since January has mopped up USD 2.4 billion in four issuances, followed by the state-run energy major ONGC’s overseas arm ONGC Videsh which had on July 8 sold bonds worth USD 2.23 billion to pay back the bridge loan it had availed of to buy 10 per cent stake in the Mozambique oil block.
The third on the top league is the country’s largest alloy maker Tata Steel which last Friday sold high yielding bonds worth USD 1.5 billion in a dual tranche issue which was the company’s debut US dollar bond sale, followed by the nation’s largest lender State Bank’s April 10 issue of USD 1.25 billion again in a dual tranche deal. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, July 27:  Capital markets watchdog Sebi may soon consider some changes in its takeover norms for listed companies, including in the provisions governing price offered to minority investors and those defining change in control.
These changes would be part of efforts to further safeguard the interest of smaller investors in case of merger and acquisition transactions involving listed companies, while also making the compliance easier for the concerned entities.
The proposals are so far in the initial stages and any final decision would be taken after detailed discussions among all the stakeholders, sources said.
The changes would also take into account the related provisions of the new Companies Act, which began coming into force at the stat of the current fiscal on April 1, 2014, as also the subsequent notification of related rules, clarification circulars and amendments made by the government.
Besides, Sebi plans to incorporate certain provisions to remove those ambiguities that have come to light in the existing regulations including on issues like definition of control after cases like Jet-Etihad deal.
Sebi revamped its regulations governing M&A deals and substantial acquisition of shares of listed companies in a big way in 2011, when it put in place a new and detailed Takeover Code.
Under the new Code, an entity buying 25 per cent stake in a listed firm needs to mandatorily make an offer to buy additional 26 per cent from public shareholders.
The open offer also gets triggered even if a company gets ‘control’ of the listed firm with a stake lower than 25 per cent, but in some cases there have been difference of opinion on the definition of ‘control’.
The new norms increased the open offer size for public shareholders from 20 per cent previously, while the trigger threshold was also raised from 15 per cent earlier.
Since notifying the new takeover regulations in 2011, Sebi has further tightened these norms on a few occasions including by bringing entities acquiring more than five per cent stake under its insider trading regulations.
Earlier this year, Sebi also said that price offered to the public shareholders and the price for preferential allotment would need to be decided on basis of the prevailing market price on the earliest date when the company’s board approves the transaction.
Still, there have been cases where the provisions for market-determined price for takeover offers have led to a high level of speculation and possible manipulation in share price of the target company.
To plug this loophole and safeguard markets from such manipulations, Sebi may also consider changes in the pricing mechanism for takeover offers. There have been some suggestions about delinking the takeover price from the prevailing share price, but no final decision has been taken in this regard. (PTI)

MUMBAI, July 27:  Citing the urgent need for turning the country into an export powerhouse and the prevalent practices in competing nations, the Exim Bank has requested the Reserve Bank to increase its leverage ratio so that it can lend more to the exporters.
Currently, RBI allows the Exim Bank to leverage only 10 times of its net-owned funds, which it wants to be hiked to at least 15 times.
“We are classified at par with a commercial bank under the RBI guidelines and can lend only 10 times our net owned funds, which restricts our capacity to help exporters,” newly-appointed chairman and managing director Yaduvendra Mathur told PTI in an interview.
He said his counterpart in China has a leverage of 77.5 times, in Korea it is 30 times, while for Canada’s EDC it is 15 times.
“We have been requesting RBI to recognise us as a special case of a development finance institution which helps the country’s interests,” he said, adding it has been requesting for the leverage to be increased to 15 times of the NOF.
At present, the bank has to depend on government infusions to increase its capacity to lend, he said, adding it is expecting an infusion of Rs 1,300 crore this fiscal from the government.
“Last year, we got an infusion of Rs 700 crore and there is a headroom of at least Rs 5,000 crore more on the paid-up capital front, after the changes in the relevant Act in 2011 which increased our paid capital to Rs 10,000 crore in phases,” he said. (PTI)_