NEW DELHI, 10:  Multiplex chain operator PVR plans to invest Rs 150 crore to open another 75 screens over the next one year in the country.
“In the next 9-12 months, we will be adding some 75 odd screens all over the country. Our capex plan for the next one year is Rs 150 crore to fund this roll out,” PVR Ltd Chief Financial Officer Nitin Sood told.
The national capital-based firm, which acquired rival Cinemax recently, has 213 screens operational in the country.
“We currently have 213 screens plus 138 screens of Cinemax, taking the total number to 351 in the country. We will be adding another 75 to this tally,” Sood said.
When asked where the company plans to come up with the new screens, Sood said: “It will be fairly spread out in Tier-I and Tier-II cities.”
He added that the new screens would come up at various places, including Kochi and Chandigarh.
In January this year, PVR completed the acquisition of 69.27 per cent stake in Cinemax India Ltd from its erstwhile promoters.
In compliance with SEBI Takeover Code, the company has announced an open offer to shareholders of Cinemax India for an additional 26 per cent stake, and the tendering period shall commence on February 4, 2013.
Consequent to the said acquisition, Cinemax India Ltd has now become a subsidiary of PVR Ltd. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Feb 10:  Online shopping website ShopClues aims to clock revenues to the tune of Rs 350 crore this year on the back of an expanding customer base and growing sales in clothing, fashion accessories.
The company, which was launched in November 2011, had clocked a revenue of Rs 35 crore in FY’2012. It follows the January to December fiscal year.
“We are entering 2013 with a very sizable tailwind and seeing expansion of our customer base. We have one of the largest catalogue of products for any e-commerce firm and the prices are very competitive,” ShopClues Founder and CEO Sandeep Aggarwal told.
At present, the company handles over 18 lakh transactions annually and around 42 million visitors a year, he added.
When asked about the 10-fold growth in target revenue for 2013, Aggarwal said, “It is not 10-fold growth because we are already doing Rs 100 crore in annualised revenue based on our monthly run rate. So, we are talking about 3.5 per cent growth in our January numbers. By the way, we were up 250 per cent from January 2012 to January 2013.”
In January 2013, Shopclues posted a revenue of about Rs 8 crore and handled 1.52 lakh transactions compared to Rs 11 lakh in revenue and 200 transactions in January 2012, he added.
“That apart in 2013, we are looking at handling about 30 lakh transactions and also expect the total visitors on our website to cross 10 crore,” Aggarwal said.
In the first half of 2012, the company saw a healthy growth in sale of electronics, mobile and home appliances, but since October there has been a rise in the sale of clothes, fashion accessories like perfumes, which added to ShopClues revenue growth, he said.
On the reasons for the growth in transactions on the site, ShopClues Vice-President (Engineering) Mrinal Chatterjee said that the company is offering the merchants a world-class E-Commerce technology platform that provides a wide reach and low transaction cost for third party merchants to own and operate their online store.
Founded in July, 2011 in Silicon Valley in California in US, ShopClues.Com offers close to 200,000 products with over 5,000 sellers across India. It has 200 employees in India and is based out of Gurgaon, New Delhi, Mumbai and Vadodara. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Feb 10:  State-run Power Finance Corp has paid an interim dividend of Rs 583.83 crore to the government.
“For the financial year 2012-13, PFC paid an all time high interim dividend of 60 per cent amounting to Rs 792 crore on its paid up equity share capital,” the company said in a statement.
At present, the government holds 73.72 per cent stake in the company, which primarily lends to the power sector.
PFC Chairman and Managing Director Satnam Singh presented a cheque for the interim dividend of Rs 583.83 crore to Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on February 8.
The company reported a net profit of Rs 3,125 crore in the first nine months of the 2012-13 financial year, an increase of 41 per cent compared to the year-ago period.
For the three months ended December 2012, the company posted a net profit of Rs 1,117 crore as against Rs 1,108 crore in the same period a year ago.
Total income from operations climbed to Rs 4,465.37 crore in the third quarter of current fiscal. In the year-ago period, it stood at Rs 3,282.35 crore. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Feb 10:  To mark 31 years of starting its operations, country’s largest power producer NTPC will organise an international conference here this week.
State-run NTPC synchronised its first generation unit at Singrauli plant in Uttar Pradesh in 1982. Synchronisation is the final step before commissioning of a unit.
The conference on the theme ‘Sustainable Growth — Strategies for Fuel & Efficiency’ would be held on February 13, NTPC said in a statement.
Around 60-70 research papers, including from international entities, are expected to be presented at this Operation & Maintenance (O&M) conference.
“This annual mega event will showcase the best and modern/new technologies and practices being adopted in the operation and maintenance of power plants worldwide,” the statement said.
The first 200-MW unit was commissioned at Singrauli plant in February, 1982. Currently, the project has an installed capacity in 2,000 MW.
At present, NTPC has an overall generation capacity of 39,674 MW. (PTI)

MUMBAI, Feb 10:  MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) will begin trading in equities and equity derivatives from Monday.
With its 40-stock index named SX40, MCX-SX is the third full-fledged equity bourse after BSE and NSE.
The bourse was formally launched by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday.
SX40 will be a free-float based index of large-cap and liquid stocks, representing diverse sectors. The base value will be 10,000 with a base date of March 31, 2010, MCX-SX Vice-chairman Jignesh Shah said at the launch.
The index is designed to measure the economic performance with better representation of various industries and sectors based on the ICB (industry classification benchmark), a global classification from the FTSE of the London bourse.
The index allows fast entry for companies with better free float, market cap and liquidity. SX40 includes companies that have a minimum free float of 10 percent and is within the top 100 liquid companies, MCX-SX Managing Director & Chief Executive Joseph Massey said.
Under the capital market segment, initially equity shares of 1,116 companies will be admitted for trading under the “permitted to trade” category, Shah said.
Shah added that there is also huge opportunity in bonds, interest rates derivatives, currency and SME markets.
The exchange hopes to launch index on several sectors in the near future, Massey said. He pointed out that out of the 700 membership applications received by the exchange, 405 applications have been registered by Sebi.
“We have not set up any volume target, but there will be systematic growth,” Shah added.
Shah said, “All national exchanges are at par on compliances of market regulator. Our compliance regulations will be more than 100 per cent as we are dealing with 10 regulators in the world.”
The exchange has its own clearing corporation which will clear the trades in equity and equity derivatives, Massey said.
MCX-SX received commencement certificate from the market regulator Sebi for trading in new segments such as equity, futures and options on equity, interest rate derivatives and wholesale debt market in December last year. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Feb 10:  Emerging as the most-preferred share sale route for listed firms, the OFS (Offer For Sale) mechanism has been used by as many as 22 companies to raise a collective amount of about Rs 39,000 crore since its launch about a year ago.
The companies having tapped the OFS route this year to help their promoters raise funds through sale of shares include public sector giants like NTPC and Oil India, both of which managed to elicit impressive investor interest.
Among the total 22 companies that have used this mechanism to sell shares in the last 11 months, the largest has been the Rs 12,666-crore issue by state-run energy major ONGC in March, 2012.
The OFS method allows the companies to sell shares in a simplified process in the stock market through a one-day auction process.
It was introduced by market regulator Sebi early last year to help the companies meet minimum public shareholding limits (25 per cent for private sector firms by June 2013 and 10 per cent for PSUs by August this year).
Three firms, NTPC, Oil India and Adani Enterprises, have used the OFS route this year and all of them were fully subscribed.
The blockbuster NTPC stake sale fetched the government Rs 11,500 crore and was over-subscribed 1.7 times. Prior to that, the government garnered Rs 3,100 crore from sale of 10 per cent stake in Oil India in another fully-subscribed issue.
The firms that tapped OFS last year include Wipro, Adani Power, Jaiprakash Power Ventures, DB Corp, Muthoot Cap, Sical Logistics, Reliance Power, NMDC, Hindustan Copper, Pioneer Distilleries and Eros International. Among these, all issues were fully-subscribed, except Wipro and Pioneer Distilleries.
Both DB Corp and Adani Enterprises have twice used this mechanism to sell stake.
In February last year, Sebi had created two new routes for share sale by promoters to meet minimum public holding norms, Institutional Placement Programme (IPP) and OFS.
These two are fast-track stake sale programmes available for share sale through auction method, as against long-drawn traditional processes like Follow-on Public Offers (FPOs).
So far, only two companies have opted for IPPs.
“Promoters need to bring down their stake to 75 per cent as per Sebi guidelines. In last few months, markets have been good, riding high on reforms measures. Any issue that is priced right, investors flock that counter. Companies are coming up with OFS because there is appetite in the market for the same,” Ashika Brokers’ Research Head Paras Bothra said.
“OFS route can become more popular if stock market continues with its uptrend in short-term,” he added.
Experts believe that attractive pricing and buoyant market conditions have also helped in the success of recent OFS issues. The BSE benchmark Sensex has gained nearly 11 per cent since March 2012 till date. (PTI)

GENEVA, Feb 10:  The spectre of revolution is stalking the world of Swiss private banking, as two paragons of discretion, Pictet and Lombard Odier, prepare to open their books.
The Geneva-based operations, founded over 200 years ago, have both decided to drop their special statutes and transform themselves into banks almost like any other.
The move is seen as part of a drive to improve transparency and protect the sector from risks associated with scandals such as the Madoff case in the United States, analysts say.
Swiss private banks operate under rules which make the wealthy managing partners personally responsible for the money they manage.
In other words, if the bank gets into trouble, the managing partners can lose all their assets, not just those they have invested in the operation.
Drawn from an elite social circle of Geneva Protestants, the city was the hub of the Reformation five centuries ago, the private bankers have over the centuries refreshed their ranks by tapping wealthy, likeminded members from their own community.
That tradition of unlimited responsibility for those who run private banks has long been seen as a commercial argument for rich customers who want the comfort such a guarantee provides.
Not being listed on the stock exchange, they do not have to publish their results, meaning their business is the preserve of a closed circle of clients.
But from next year, both Pictet and Lombard Odier are to recast themselves as a “corporate partnership”, a hybrid status that will make it easier to compare them with fully-listed Swiss players such as Credit Suisse and UBS.
Similar to the “limited company” structure in the British Isles — with its well-known “Ltd.” label — the structure will enable the banks to tap the investment market while maintaining the managing partners’ responsibility.
According to a Pictet spokesman, neither bank will be publicly-listed, and only private investors are to be tapped for capital.
After the reform is in place, the managing partners will only risk the funds they have invested in the bank, rather than having to put all of their personal assets on the line.
“This legal structure allows us to maintain the benefits of a private partnership, such as our independence, strict sense of responsibilities and our long-term management outlook while ensuring that our interests remain aligned with those of our clients,” Patrick Odier, senior partner of Lombard Odier, said in a statement. (AGENCIES)