Tata Sons

The Tata Group had revenues of about $62.5 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, and operates in sectors including software, steel, energy, automobiles, hospitality, and consumer products. Founded by Jamsetji Tata in the mid 19th Century, the group's 27 publicly listed enterprises have a combined market capitalisation of some $60 billion and a shareholder base of 3.2 million, the group's website said.

Its top companies include Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tata Motors, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, and Tata Power.

Tata Group was leading corporate India's overseas expansion, having notched up the country's biggest foreign takeover with its $13 billion deal to buy Corus in 2007, and putting Indian industry on the map with the Nano car project. The global financial meltdown has hurt the Tata Group by making it more difficult to refinance short-term loans taken out by Tata Motors for the Jaguar/Land Rover deal.

Plans to raise 41.5 billion rupees ($825 million) via two rights issues in October to repay the loans were hit by a stock market slump, with company founders raising their stake to 42 percent from 33 percent as they covered most of the issue.

That month, Tata Motors also said it was rethinking its plans to raise $600 million overseas due to falling markets, and was also reviewing its expansion plans due to softening demand.

In November, Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, wrote to the heads of group companies, telling them to finalise all pending loan and funding agreements, even if it meant accepting higher interest rates, and put the conglomerate's acquisition plans on hold.

The launch of the Nano, greeted with a rapturous welcome at the Delhi autoshow in January, has been pushed into 2009 after Tata Motors shifted production to Gujarat state in October.

Violent protests by farmers unhappy with the compensation for their land had forced Tata Motors to stop work on the factory in West Bengal state where it planned to build the Nano, which at 100,000 rupees ($2,000) is slated to be the world's cheapest car.

At least 183 people were killed in India's financial capital after Pakistani terrorists struck two of Mumbai's best-known luxury hotels, including the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the flagship of Tata Group's Indian Hotels Co Ltd.

"The Mumbai attacks add to these adverse conditions. No company can emerge unscathed out of this," said Rishi Sahay of consultancy firm IndusView Advisors. "But the Tata Group will come out it after some time. The kind of balance sheet they have is difficult to underestimate. They have an excellent brand name and they always manage to pull out some miracle from their hat."

Indian Hotels has said it will restore the heritage hotel. "We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack and bring back the Taj to its full glory," said R.K. Krishna Kumar, vice chairman of Indian Hotels.

Reuters

By Sumeet Chatterjee

The original article described the Pakistani terrorists as "militants", which I have changed and linked to my earlier blog post.

In terms of market capitalization of the Tata Group companies, TCS is the largest, followed by Tata Steel, Tata Power and Tata Motors. Retail investors own nearly a quarter of the various listed Tata group companies. There are also unlisted companies like Tata Industries and Tata Sky.



The Tata Groups holding company is Tata Sons, which is also unlisted. Tata Sons holds major stakes in the Tata group companies and in the unlisted companies under its ownership. Tata Sons is one of the the most closely held and highly valued companies in India.

Thorium reactors the future

Monazite, from which Thorium is extracted, is abundant in Kerala state's coastline.

India must introspect on which nuclear fuel it will choose to achieve its goal of generating 20,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020 — uranium, which the whole world uses, or thorium, a fuel India can source locally and has technical capabilities in, but which remains unproven commercially? The choice will determine over Rs 1 lakh crore of immediate orders for equipment and project management services, a lifetime of maintenance services contracts and an opportunity to stamp the future of India’s ambitious civil nuclear energy programme with the technology’s supremacy.

"If anything is to be approved, it should be thorium," says Seth Grae, president and CEO of US-based nuclear power consulting firm thorium Power. "India should use local thorium reserves. Compared to other extractions, thorium extraction is a simple procedure."

The lobby working against thorium is that of the established reactor builders, technology providers and nuclear-plant operators, who would rather milk their investments in uranium fuel technology they are currently using rather than spend millions on learning and ratifying a new technology.

Thorium is back in nuclear debates almost 50 years after it was banished as an unviable technology. Ironically, the world's first nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania in the US was built using thorium fuel. Although thorium is three-four times more abundant in nature than uranium, the West embraced uranium as the programme could double up for nuclear weapons too. Thorium, though, has several advantages:

Unlike uranium, thorium cannot be readily used as weapon-grade fissile material

Thorium reactors produce 70 per cent less nuclear waste compared to uranium reactors

Spent fuel from thorium reactors is 90 per cent less radioactive than uranium spent fuel

Thorium fuel is 5-10 per cent cheaper and less price-volatile than uranium fuel

Thorium is three-four times more abundant on Earth than uranium

The entire Indian nuclear programme is built around the heavy-water technology that is better suited for thorium use. No other nation, except Russia and, to an extent, Germany, has since worked on heavy-water technology development. More than five decades ago when Homi Bhabha conceived the nuclear programme, it was tailored to eventually use thorium because India has 290,000 tonnes of thorium reserves — the world's second largest behind Australia’s 300,000 tonnes.



India is the only country to be setting up a 300-MW plant at Kalpakkam near Chennai that will be a stepping stone to commercial thorium power generation; the plant is being designed for an astonishing 100-year lifetime! It had been conceived after a trial-run in a 30-KW reactor, also at Kalpakkam. As the next step, a thorium reactor is currently being vetted at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) in Mumbai for technology and design.

"India is ahead of the curve of almost everybody in thorium-fuel reactors," says D.V. Kapur, director of Reliance Industries and former power secretary. "But, at what stage thorium reactors will be possible is still a question."

Businessworld
Rajeev Dubey

Economic impact of Pakistani terrorism

His crazed eyes said it all. Sadistic glee was etched across the face of the fidayeen captured by closed-circuit cameras at the erstwhile Victoria Terminus in Mumbai as he shot wantonly into the crowd of commuters headed home after a day’s work. By the time he and his band of 20-odd juvenile terrorists had been killed or captured — or had escaped — after killing nearly 200 people and injuring more than 350. Even though the government now says that there were only 10 terrorists, 9 killed and 1 captured and in interrogation, most security analysts around the world don't believe that. The feeling among Indian analysts is that the others, "May have disappeared into the western suburbs in preparation for a future attacks on places such as airports, key bus terminals and business premises such as BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex)."

"These attacks are simply to hamper India’s economic growth," saysMadhav Nalapat, professor of geo-politics at the Manipal University. "The ISI is desperate to stop India’s progress because this gives us more global clout and power, and that threatens them."

The economic focus of the attacks is also clear given their targets. While terrorists often hit economic symbols and civic landmarks, such as the veritable Taj Mahal Hotel (picture above), a symbol of India’s independence and dignity, the Pakistanis started their butchery at the Leopold Café in Mumbai, a favoured watering hole with backpackers and tourists.

Pallavi Dalal, a fashion designer, says she was enjoying drinks with friends at Leopold when the gunmen came. "We only managed to get a table at a far corner near the side entrance, and that saved us," she says. "When we heard a loud crackling noise, we looked around and saw these two chaps crossing the road and firing into Leopold with automatic weapons. We ran out from the side entrance and down the lane into the first building we saw. Firing blindly, they then ran down the lane we had escaped, towards the Taj Hotel. They were shooting all the time, sometimes with one hand, and only stopped to renew the magazine of what we sensed were AK-47s."

That the Pakistani terrorists then rounded up people with British, American and Israeli passports has furthered reinforced this view with the public. "The terrorists are trying to shatter confidence in India among the global community," says Nivedita Dasgupta, a Mumbai-based independent corporate trainer.

The government knew terrorists used the sea route to transport the explosives used in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, and even had fresh warning from the army and intelligence agencies about the possibility of terrorists hitting Mumbai via the sea. The IB source says that a combined meeting of agencies — held a few days before the attacks — called for a review of coastal security. But all this failed to stop Ismail and his fellow fidayeen, who came to Mumbai from Karachi via the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat using firstly the MV Al-Husseni, a Pakistani merchant vessel provided no doubt by the Pakistan navy. They then hijacked the Kuber, an Indian fishing vessel and brutally murdered its crew and wore their clothes and other effects, like red threads on the wrist, to pass off as fishermen.

Already, IHS Global Insight, a US economic forecasting firm, has raised India’s security risk rating by 0.25 to 3.50 "to reflect the continued volatility in Mumbai and the potential for coordinated attacks in separate locations". The British High Commission and American Embassy have also issued travel advisories. And it is estimated that even if 10 per cent of foreign companies restrict travel to India over the next year, the country could loose $1-7 billion in investment.

Air France and KLM have already cancelled flights to Mumbai, and with aviation also hurting because of the anti-government demonstrations in Thailand, there is a growing sense of panic in the industry. Several large tour operators are defaulting on payments, including Raj Travels, which has already defaulted on its payment to airlines.

The terror attacks have also jeopardised the CphI, among the largest global conventions on pharmaceuticals, which was to start on Friday at the Bombay Exhibition Centre. The conference was expected to do business to the tune of Rs 500 crore, and now stands postponed to 2009. Many of the 5,000-10,000 attendees expected are already backing out, says Ajit Kamath, chairman of Arch Pharmalabs, who was helping organise the event. Kamath now worries that China, which has projected its relatively terror-free image with much success, might appear more attractive as a business destination in the short term.

For now, all politicians are making the right cooperative noises. But this is expected to change soon as the BJP, Left and Congress have very divergent views on how to deal with terror. Professor Madhav Nalapat says that over the past four years, the UPA government has forced the security apparatus to follow a "politically correct approach" that is backfiring. "Some sensitive localities have not been entered, searched, etc., for years. And now I fear things are running out of control," he says. Some intelligence reports have maintained there are 100,000 fidayeen waiting in India for attack orders. And Nalapat says, "It could take 10-20 years to end the problem unless we get serious."

Businessworld
Inputs by Gurbir Singh, Gauri Kamath, Dhanya Krishnakumar, Shalini S. Sharma, Noemie Bisserbe, Pierre Mario Fitter, Manashwi, Sreevalsan Menon, Janhavi Abhyankar and Deepti Bose