Vijay Mallya offers $4 mn apartments in Bangalore

MUMBAI: Billionaire Vijay Mallya , owner of the world’s second-largest liquor company, is razing his ancestral home in Bangalore to build $4 million apartments as the number of people rich enough to afford them grows.

United Breweries Holdings , which owns controlling stakes in Mallya’s liquor, beer and airline units, and Prestige Estates Projects are jointly developing the 4.5 acre (1.8 hectare) plot in the technology hub, home to Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Infosys Technologies Ltd. Construction will start in December, Irfan Razack, chairman of Prestige, said on Wednesday after the developer’s shares debuted.

Demand for luxury apartments in India is rising as the biggest rally in stocks in 18 years in 2009 boosted the ranks of the affluent in the thirdfastest growing major economy.

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest individual , will move into a 27-storey skyscraper in south Mumbai that cost $2 billion to build and is the world’s most expensive home, according to Forbes Magazine. “There is now considerable demand for high-end apartments in Bangalore, and it is led by the senior management class, corporate houses, non-resident Indian businessmen and high-networth individuals,” said Anuj Puri, Mumbai-based chairman of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, the local unit of the world’s second-largest commercial property broker .

The combined net worth of the nation’s 100 wealthiest people climbed to an all-time high of $300 billion this year, equivalent to a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product, according to Forbes. India’s wealthy may almost double their assets to $6.4 trillion over the next five years as economic growth swells their ranks, Credit Suisse Group AG said in its global wealth report.

Suit to soup: Indian MBAs serve as waiters in UK

LONDON: A young Indian immigrant, Sultana from Hyderabad — she has a masters in business administration from a British university — is working as a waitress. ''Unfortunately, I'm not getting the chance I was expecting.

That's why I'm here in a fast food restaurant,'' she said in a radio programme on Sunday. She added, ''Most of my friends work in fast food restaurants because they're not getting (what) they deserve for what they studied.'' Others are employed as night-time security staff.

With UK barely out of a crippling recession and with unemployment nearing 2.5 million, good jobs are hard to come by.

A tough-talking home office minister, Damian Green, said, ''Those coming into the UK under the highly skilled migrant route should only be able to do highly skilled jobs. It should not be used as a means to enter the low skilled jobs market.'' He went on, ''While it's important that low-skilled jobs are filled, there are hundreds of thousands of British people who could be doing them instead of a migrant.''

Such workers are categorized as Tier-1 immigrants under a points-based system started in 2008 by the previous Labour party government. This was tailored to attract ''the brightest and best''. Indians who graduate or complete post-graduate studies in a British university also fall into the Tier-1 classification and are permitted to remain in the UK for up to two years to acquire professional experience.

But there is a hint that the system introduced by Labour could be altered. It will also form the foundation of an immigration cap to be imposed by the present Conservative party and Liberal Democrat coalition administration effective from April 2011; and which is expected to be announced soon.

There are wider concerns among UK authorities that the Tier-1 post study work route is being exploited by some migrants who provide bogus qualifications to obtain visas .

However, the Left-oriented Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said,''Damian Green is on shaky ground in implying that highly skilled migrants coming to the UK under Tier-1 are entering the low skilled job market in significant numbers over a sustained time period.''

It further said, ''It looks very much like an attempt to justify a drastic reduction in Tier-1 visa numbers under the proposed cap.'' It could undermine Britain's economic recovery, it warned.

Suit to soup: Indian MBAs serve as waiters in UK

LONDON: A young Indian immigrant, Sultana from Hyderabad — she has a masters in business administration from a British university — is working as a waitress. ''Unfortunately, I'm not getting the chance I was expecting.

That's why I'm here in a fast food restaurant,'' she said in a radio programme on Sunday. She added, ''Most of my friends work in fast food restaurants because they're not getting (what) they deserve for what they studied.'' Others are employed as night-time security staff.

With UK barely out of a crippling recession and with unemployment nearing 2.5 million, good jobs are hard to come by.

A tough-talking home office minister, Damian Green, said, ''Those coming into the UK under the highly skilled migrant route should only be able to do highly skilled jobs. It should not be used as a means to enter the low skilled jobs market.'' He went on, ''While it's important that low-skilled jobs are filled, there are hundreds of thousands of British people who could be doing them instead of a migrant.''

Such workers are categorized as Tier-1 immigrants under a points-based system started in 2008 by the previous Labour party government. This was tailored to attract ''the brightest and best''. Indians who graduate or complete post-graduate studies in a British university also fall into the Tier-1 classification and are permitted to remain in the UK for up to two years to acquire professional experience.

But there is a hint that the system introduced by Labour could be altered. It will also form the foundation of an immigration cap to be imposed by the present Conservative party and Liberal Democrat coalition administration effective from April 2011; and which is expected to be announced soon.

There are wider concerns among UK authorities that the Tier-1 post study work route is being exploited by some migrants who provide bogus qualifications to obtain visas .

However, the Left-oriented Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said,''Damian Green is on shaky ground in implying that highly skilled migrants coming to the UK under Tier-1 are entering the low skilled job market in significant numbers over a sustained time period.''

It further said, ''It looks very much like an attempt to justify a drastic reduction in Tier-1 visa numbers under the proposed cap.'' It could undermine Britain's economic recovery, it warned.

Gold will outlive dollar

The world’s monetary system is in the process of melting down. We have entered the endgame for the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, but most investors and policy makers are unaware of the implications.

The only questions are how long the denouement of the dollar reserve system will last, and how much more damage will be inflicted by new rounds of quantitative easing or more radical monetary measures to prop up the system.

Whether prolonged or sudden, the transition to a stable monetary system will become possible only when the shortcomings of the status quo become unbearable.

Such a transition is, by definition, nonlinear. So central-bank soothsaying based on the extrapolation of historical data and the repetition of conventional wisdom offer no guidance on what lies ahead.

It’s amazing that there is no intelligent discourse among policy leaders on the subject of monetary rot and its implications for the future economic and political landscape. Until there is fundamental monetary reform on an international scale, most economic forecasts aren’t worth the paper on which they are written. Telltale signs of future trouble aren’t hard to spot.

Only a few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a chorus of other high-ranking Fed officials were talking about exit strategies from the US central bank’s bloated balance sheet and the financial system’s unprecedented excess liquidity. Now, those same officials are talking about pumping more money into the system to stimulate growth.

And they’re not alone: Six months ago, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, suggested that raising inflation targets to 4 per cent from 2 per cent wouldn’t be too risky. This sort of talk must grate on the nerves of our trading partners, China, India, Russia and others, who have accumulated pyramids of non-yielding treasury debt.

No haven there. Return-free risk may be a better way to put it. And bickering among central bankers over currency manipulation and rising trade tensions doesn’t exactly reinforce one’s confidence in a scenario of sustained economic growth and a return to prosperity. The prospects for an orderly unwinding of the extreme posture of global monetary policy are zero.

Bernanke, Jean- Claude Trichet and Mervyn King, his counterparts in Europe and the UK respectively, are huddling en masse upon the most precarious perch in the history of monetary affairs. These alleged guardians of monetary stability, in their attempts to shore up the system, have simply created the incinerator for paper money. We are past the point of no return. Quantitative easing may well become a way of life. The consensus investment view seems to be that the credit crisis of 2008 was a freak occurrence, unlikely to repeat. That is wishful thinking. Monetary policy has painted itself into a corner.

Based on our present course, there will be more bubbles and more meltdowns. Financial markets and institutions sense trouble, as reflected in the flight to supposedly safe assets such as treasuries and corporate-debt instruments with paltry yields, as well as the reluctance to lend by commercial banks. We are stuck in an epic liquidity trap. The irony is, if global central banks succeed in creating inflation, the value of these safe assets will be destroyed. It is a slaughter waiting to happen.

As inflation accelerates, consumers will spend to get rid of their dollars of diminishing value and spur the economy. Once consumers start spending, it will be time to raise interest rates because a solid foundation for prosperity will have been established, they say. But whatever the playbook promises, the capacity of financial markets to overshoot can’t be overestimated. The belief among policy makers and financial markets in the possibility of this sort of fine-tuning is preposterous, but it is the slender thread on which remaining investment and business confidence rests.

The breakdown of the monetary system will be chaotic. When inflation commences, it will be highly disruptive. The damage to fixed-income assets will seem instantaneous. Foreign-exchange markets will become dysfunctional. The economy will become even more fragile and unpredictable. Gold is an imperfect, but comparatively reliable, market gauge for the extent of current and future monetary destruction.

The recent acceleration in the dollar price of the metal to $1,381, a record high in nominal terms, coincided with talk of a new round of quantitative easing and highly visible discord among major nations on trade and currency-valuation issues. Naysayers point to gold’s price and see a bubble, without understanding that the only acceleration that is taking place is in the rate of decline of paper currency.

The Fed is organising an attack on the dollar’s value, believing that this is the most expedient way to defuse deflationary market forces. The man in the street is unaware, a perfect setup. Inflation can only be successful when the public doesn’t see it coming.

World stocks up modestly ahead of US vote, Fed

LONDON: World stocks mostly rose Tuesday as investors awaited the outcome of the US midterm elections and the Federal Reserve's decision on how much it will pump into the US economy to shore up the recovery.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 43.86 points, or 0.8 percent, at 5,738.48, while Germany's DAX rose 19.77 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,624.63. The CAC-40 in France was 5.93 points, or 0.2 percent, higher at 3,847.04.

Wall Street was poised for modest gains later _ Dow futures were up 22 points, or 0.2 percent, at 11,112 while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 futures rose 4.1 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,187.20.

Stocks have been fairly buoyant so far this week, especially after strong manufacturing surveys in the world's two biggest economies _ the US and China _ boosted hopes about the pace of the global recovery.

However, the forecast-busting report from the Institute for Supply Management has not altered expectations that the Fed will ease monetary policy further on Wednesday given subdued US inflation and high unemployment.

Though figures last week showed the US economy grew at a slightly faster than anticipated annualized rate of 2 percent in the third quarter, that is still not enough to bring down unemployment, which is hovering near 10 percent to the frustration of the Obama administration .

The consensus in the markets is that the central bank will announce monthly asset purchases of around $100 billion a month over the next six months at the conclusion of its two-day meeting on Wednesday.

Before the Fed statement, the markets will have the results of the Congressional elections in the US to digest.

If opinion polls are correct, President Barack Obama will have to work with a Republican-dominated House of Representatives at the very least. Many think that's a recipe for policy inaction over the coming two years before the next presidential elections, meaning the Fed will have to play an even more crucial role in sustaining the US economy.

Reliance close to crucial 1150 mark: Deepak Mohoni

What is your position really on Reliance ahead of numbers right now how are you playing the stock?

Deepak Mohoni : Well a little bit the bias has to be on the long side . It has had a pretty good rally for now couple of weeks but it is also coming close to that 1150 where it has tended to reverse far too many times so I think that is a bit of a look out there and even today it has come off the highs a little bit so this is now coming to the point where Reliance meets a lot of sellers.

So it is a question of whether that selling is absorbed or not. If it does get passed 1150 then I think it would be pretty good for the index because of the higher weightage and of course Reliance itself.

ICICI Bank Q2 net rises 19%, beats forecast

MUMBAI: ICICI Bank, India's No. 2 lender, reported an 18.8 percent rise in quarterly net profit, beating brokerage forecasts, helped by credit growth and drop in provision for bad loans.

Indian banks including rival private-sector lender HDFC Bank are seeing strong loan demand in Asia's third-largest economy, which the International Monetary Fund expects to expand 9.7 percent in 2010.

ICICI Bank said its net profit in July-September, its fiscal second quarter, rose to Rs 1,236 crore ($278 million) from Rs 1,040 crore reported a year earlier.

A Reuters poll of analysts had forecast net profit of Rs 1,169 crore. State Bank of India , the country's top lender, and ICICI and HDFC Bank are seeing an improvement in asset quality on strong revival in business and consumer confidence in India.

HDFC Bank last week met street estimates with a 33-percent rise in quarterly net profit and forecast credit growth at more than 20 percent in this fiscal year.

Shares in ICICI Bank, valued at about $27 billion, have risen 26 percent so far this year, compared with a 38 percent jump in the sector index and 15 percent gain in the main Mumbai market.