03.09.2008

• Lessons for the retail biggies
• The retail biggies are reportedly learning from their smaller brethren – the mom & pop stores and are on a course correction.
• These formats are taking a hit from high dump rates (wastages in the supply-chain), tough competition from low-cost kiranas and unviable operational costs in the low-margin food and grocery business.
• The thruput (sales) for the modern neighbourhood formats currently stands at Rs 16-Rs 20 per sq ft per day as against Rs 35-Rs 40 per sq ft per day, which industry experts reckon is the minimum required for viability. There is a huge mismatch between the rents paid and the actual sales that take place in the formats.
• Bhartiya Udyog Vyapar Mandal (BUVM), the biggest national-level association of mom-and-pop stores or kirana stores that comprises 17,000 state and district level associations across 27 states is planning to roll out 100 stores in three different cities by Diwali.
• Sanjeev Nanda held guilty: to pronounce punishment today
• A Delhi city court convicted Sanjeev Nanda, the grandson of former Naval chief SM Nanda, in the BMW hit-and-run case holding him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder as against a less stringent provision of causing death due rash and negligent driving.
• Under such stringent provision of law, the convicted son of the famous arms dealer Suresh Nanda may be punished for a maximum period of 10 years of imprisonment. The court is likely to pronounce the quantum of punishment today.
• Nagpur to host the largest solar thermal power plant in the country
• Maharashtra’s second capital Nagpur will soon have a 10-mw solar thermal power plant. The proposed solar plant will be one of the country’s biggest in this category and is an initiative of Union minister for new and renewable energy Vilas Muttemwar, who is from Nagpur.
• A sigh of relief as Gustav doesn’t inflict the feared damage
• Hurricate Gustav on the Gulf of Mexico coast of the US did not inflict the kind of damage that was feared from it.
• Even as it faded, a sister storm called Hanna reached hurricane status late Monday and headed for southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with Florida and eastern Cuba possible long-range targets.
• If you are asked to sum up the challenges faced by an RBI governor, will your summary look like this?
• The RBI governor’s job is one that calls for not just technical skills but also a rare degree of tact and diplomacy in reconciling political short-termism with the long-term professionalism of unelected central bankers. At a time when inflation pressures coexist with definite signs of a slowdown in growth momentum, both these skills are badly needed. Quite often policy prescriptions for tackling one might conflict with achieving the other.
• “The Fed and the treasury are not natural allies”, is how Alan Greenspan, former US Fed Reserve chairman once put it. Substitute RBI for Fed and the finance ministry for treasury and you have a good picture of how things are in India or indeed in most countries of the world.
• The above excerpt is from today’s ET editorial. Good one.
• Language lessons: pedalo
• A small pleasure boat powered by pedalling
• Chairman of the BSE
• Jagdish Capoor, the 69 year old former Deputy Governor of RBI.
• The post and the person are in news because the exchange is fast losing market share to its rival the NSE and there were abnormal top level exits in its organization structure of late.
• He faces a daunting task in putting the BSE back in reckoning.
• Why is NPS in the news?
• Last weekend, Union finance minister P Chidambaram announced that the New Pension Scheme (NPS) would be thrown open to individuals across the national spectrum.
• India’s pensions regulator the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) is already at work on this, and has gone a step further with plans to invite private fund managers to manage the corpus of the NPS.
• The NPS, which is now five years old now, has a corpus of Rs 4,000 crore. Estimates on the potential of the NPS based on a study done under the aegis of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and also IIMS put a number of 300 million as potential subscribers to the scheme over the next five years.
• The NPS, compared with other financial products and schemes, is on a different wicket as regards taxation. On maturity, subscribers will have to pay tax compared with investors in the public provident fund or pension plans offered by mutual funds or insurance firms.
• Man City, the football club
• Man City (Manchester City) which is owned by the former Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has just been sold to the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), for £210 million. The deal was signed in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
• Shinawatra is facing an in absentia trial for corruption charges at home and lives in exile in London.
• This change of hands has reportedly made this club the riches football club in the world, because of the wealth of its owners. It has quickly signed up some very famous players in football by spending millions.