Concorde Motors to open showroom in city: Concorde Motors, a Rs 100-crore joint venture between the Tata group and the Hong Kong-based Jardine International Motor group will launch its operations in the city with the opening of a showroom at Shivsagar estate, Worli in north central Mumbai. The Mumbai showroom has been planned for the sales and service of Telco range of passenger vehicles. The Tata group holds 50 per centequity in the venture through Telco, Tata Finance and Tata Industries and the balance is held by Jardine. The Mumbai showroom is the fifth after Bangalore, New Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai.

B&K Information unveils banking solution: B&K Information Technologies, involved in domestic banking software products has launched OMNIBank 2.0. The OMNIBank 2.0 is an enterprise banking solution aimed at seamless integration of bank branches to their head office for creating powerful customer services options and decision support systems. OMNIBank 2.0 manages layers of retazil and corporate banking transactions and accounting at branches and provides electronic services like telebanking, fax-on-demand, remote PC terminal, ATM connect and touch screen-based terminals.

Nortel Networks appointment: Nortel Networks has appointed TG Ramesh as the country manager India and Saarc for their Bay Networks line of business. Prasad, who was with Micom Communications and instrumental in the setting up of its Indiaoperations, has more than 11 years of experience in the telecommunications and networking industry. Bay Networks, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nortel had revenues of $2.4 billion. Nortel Network with revenues of $15.5 billion is involved in designing, building and delivery of telecommunications and IP-optimized networks.

Krone launches new module: The Bangalore-based Krone on Friday launched the Highband module which will provide high speed LAN and WAN systems with extended bandwidth capacity and improved transmission performance. The Highband also supports future network destined to carry ATM, multimedia and high resolution interactive services. The Highband offers 23Db more headroom than the Category 5 standard with a NEXT of 63 Db at 100 Mhz and 48Db at 350 Mhz.

Mineral Sales gets export house status: Mineral Sales Pvt Ltd has received the export house status. The Bangalore-based company has been allowed to directly export its high grade iron ore fines throughout the world by the ministryof commerce. The company's product range includes lumpy iron ore, iron ore fines, high density aggregate for sub-marine pipe coating and fine ore of high density maily used as a weighting agent for drilling fluids in the offshore oil well drilling. According to a company release, Mineral Sales also produces iron ore concentrate which is mainly used for pellets production.

Sun Pharma move to fund acquisitions: Sun Pharmaceuticals is believed to have placed preference shares worth Rs 50 crore with a clutch of domestic banks including State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda. These preference shares carry a price tag of Rs 100 each.

These funds would be used to part-finance Sun's recent acquisition of a bag full of brands from the Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma. Although the price remains undisclosed, sources indicate that the deal was clinched at a sum accounting for less than Rs 53 crore. This payment would be made over a four-month to six-month period. Pharma brand sales usually command a premium ofaround 1 to 2.5 times the actual turnover of the product on the block

The preference offer would also part fund the company's capital expenditure, estimated at Rs 25 crores for the current fiscal.