Stressed power assets: Panel discusses issues, RBI plays truant
The empowered committee on stressed power assets, which met here for the first time on Friday, deliberated on possible changes in fuel allocation policies, regulatory frameworks and solutions to the vexed issue of irregular payments from discoms. It also discussed a payment security mechanism for independent power companies, which has been a long-standing demand of private power firms, sources said. The panel, however, could not make significant headway as no representative from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) turned up. On the agenda was a proposal to set up an asset reconstruction company (ARC) to take over banks’ stressed power assets.
Coca-Cola to acquire Costa Coffee in a mega $5 billion deal
Coca-Cola Co has agreed to buy the world’s second largest coffee chain Costa from Britain’s Whitbread Plc for an enterprise value of 3.9 billion pounds ($5.1 billion), opening a new front in its push away from traditional sodas. Whitbread said in a statement on Friday that the deal, which will give Coke almost 4,000 coffee outlets in the UK and across Europe, had been agreed unanimously by the Whitbread board as in the best interests of shareholders. Whitbread, which had been in the process of demerging its coffee business from its hotel chain, acquired Costa in 1995 for 19 million pounds when it had only 39 shops.
Calcutta high court rules dearness allowance is a legal right
Handing a major victory to the West Bengal government’s near one million employees and pensioners, the Calcutta high court on Friday ruled that they have a legal right to inflation-linked dearness allowance (DA), overturning an order of the state appellate tribunal, or SAT. The SAT had said that DA was the government’s discretion and that employees could not claim to have a right to it, but Debasish Kar Gupta and Sekhar B. Saraf, judges of the Calcutta high court, said in their verdict that inflation affects everyone across the country and that the appellate tribunal must reconsider the claim for DA from state government employees in the light of the rate determined by the Centre.
Banks serving summons to defaulters through WhatsApp, emails
HDFC Bank and other lenders are using WhatsApp and email to pin down defaulters of various kinds, especially those who could slip through the cracks when more traditional means are employed. Such summons is being served through digital means following a judgment earlier this year. The post can get unduly delayed and addresses keep changing but phone numbers, WhatsApp IDs and email addresses are more constant, making digital notices less easy to dodge. And those two blue ticks, showing that a WhatsApp message has been read, make receipt almost impossible to deny. However, disabling ‘read receipts’ in the settings is one way of avoiding this.
Ramky infra sells NAM Expressway to Cube Highways for Rs 1,669 Crore
The Ramky Group, which last fortnight sold a controlling stake in a group company to global private-equity major KKR in a landmark deal, has agreed to sell its access-controlled road asset NAM Expressway in favour of the Singapore-based toll roads operator Cube Highways for Rs 1,669 crore. The Hyderabad-headquartered infrastructure firm has been seeking to sell some of its road assets, with the group following up on the $530-million KKR investment in Ramky Enviro for a 60% stake. Ramky Infratech has on Friday announced signing a share purchase agreement with Cube Highways, formed by the International Finance Corporation NSE (IFC) and I Squared Capital.
About the Author
