Top corporate news of the day

In a major relief to Reliance Industries, the Defence Ministry has agreed to relax the “No-Go” zones imposed on its producing KG-D6 gas block and discovery block of NEC-25 in Bay of Bengal and permitted oil and gas activities with certain conditions. (BL) With pay rise talks between management and workers at Hero MotoCorp’s Gurgaon factory making no progress, heads of the staff union hinted at a “hard decision”. (BS) Essar Oil plans to drill up to 300 production wells at Ranigunj (East) coal-bed methane asset near Durgapur in West Bengal, over the next one year to boost methane output to approximately 3mn cubic metres. (BL) GMR Infrastructure would sell its 70% stake in a Singapore- based Island Power, for US$488mn (BS). Tata Steel has commissioned a new 0.7mtpa coke oven battery and a by-product plant at Jamshedpur works. (BL) Hindustan Copper will spend about Rs5.33bn to treble production capacity at its Khetri Copper Complex in the next five years. (BL) Bharti Airtel raised US$1bn through a bond sale in the foreign market. (BS) SAIL has increased the prices for its products by up to Rs 500 per tonne for March. (BL) Tata Motors slashed prices of its Indica and Manza range of passenger cars by up to Rs 50,000 in order to prevent falling sales in recent months. (BL) Axiata, the Malaysia based telecom operator has approached Bharti Airtel to acquire the Indian operator’s business in Sri Lanka. (BS) Mahindra & Mahindra launched a new version of its light commercial vehicle Maxximo. (BL) NMDC has reduced its price for iron ore lumps by about 2.2%, but kept the price of fines unchanged for March. (BL) Gammon India has initiated talks with investors to sell up to 24% stake in its listed subsidiary, Gammon Infrastructure Projects. (ET) Russia’s Rosneft has offered ONGC Videsh a stake in Magadan-2 and Magadan-3 exploration blocks in the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Russia. (ET) Telecom operator Videocon Mobile Services has selected European telecom gear maker Nokia Siemens Network for rolling out its 4G services network in the country. (ET)