BAT seeks to pick up unsubscribed VST rights
BAT Industries plc, the UK-based stakeholder in VST Industries Ltd of Hyderabad, has applied to the Government seeking permission to pick up the unsubscribed portion of the proposed Rs. 74-crore rights issue of fully-convertible debentures by VST, to be issued in the ratio of 35 debentures for every 100 equity shares. Responding to a query in this regard, Mr. Michael Prideaux, Group Public Affairs Director of BAT, told Business Line from his London office on Wednesday that permission to pick up the unsubscribed portion of the VST rights had been sought.
Renowned economist and Professor at Harvard University, Dr. Amartya Kumar Sen, has expressed scepticism over the Government’s move to ‘target’ social services at the really needy sections of the country’s population. “Targeting, in principle, has great merit in the sense of delivering social services to the right people. But if you are going to rely on petty bureaucrats with discretionary powers to oversee implementation of targeting, it may not work and would even prove counter-productive,” he said while addressing newspersons.
TNEB plans to cancel MoUs for three projects
Irked by the delay, the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) plans to cancel the MoUs for at least three power projects. A decision on cancelling the MoUs is expected to be taken by the board next week and communications sent to the promoters giving them three months to explain their position. The TNEB had been monitoring these projects on a regular basis and found that there had not been much progress in them on issues such as fuel linkage.