February 05, 2001

IDBI'S KBC - FINAL ROUND
The Kaun Banega Chairman game at the IDBI is now approaching the final round - but there is apparently many a twist more before any body grabs the post. The game has now reached the stage where the government has appointed SK chakrabarti as acting - chairman, but with a catch. He has administrative power only and none to sanction and bad loans. Some blame it on an anonymous letter about the former chairman which caused quite a flutter at the Finance Ministry and the Vigilance agencies a few week ago - the prognosis is that government wants to be very cautious about appointing the new chairman. The battle for the post is now evenly matched between Chakrabarti and VP Singh - ironically after all the hoopla about advertising the post the two contenders are both insiders. Moreover, both have equally formidable supporters (one is form Sinha's State, Bihar ) and the could lead to a possible stalemate. Another snag is North Block's inclination to split the post and separate Chairman and Managing Director. That would force the present contenders to grapple for the more powerful Managing Directors job, since the top post would be a non executive one. Typical of the manner in which public sector postings are decided in India the man being cinsidered for Chairmanship is a South Indian in order to achieve a regional balance. Is it any wonder to achieve a regional balance. Is it any wounder that IDBI's NPAs continue to mount and its share price to languish?

More on Enron
The Maharashtra Government has again bought time by making a tiny last minute payment to Dabhol Power Company (DPC) in order to avert its threat to invoke the counter guarantee. This time around it waited until DPC had encashed its Letter of Credit which was apparently opened with Canara Bank. Curiously the Chief Minister now seems to prefer repudiating Phase II rather than to set up the promised committee to examine its feasibility. Does the state hace a clear plan of action or is it merely procrastinating ? If DPC decides to invoke the counter guarantee the Congress Government would have successfully pushed the problem, on to the Centre: After all it was the 13 day BJP government which had cleared the Enron project just minutes before it demitted office. Latter it was again the BJP - Shiv Sena government which cleared the second phase of the DPC project. The BJP certainly deserves to handle the mess.

Bharat Ratna
It has to be the ultimate devaluation of our national awards. Just days after the awards were announce thelargest English newspaper in India on its famous Page Three carried this item which said 'Lata Mangeshkar fittingly deserves the Padma Vibhushan' - the rest of the para had the mandatory gush about how she was 'one of our tallest citizens, (and) her reach and rich body of work unrivalled by most'. Padma Vibhushan? Was it just a big goof up or was it the page three way of saying that the nightingale deserves a Padma Vibhushan but not the maestro is clearly not the starlet, bimbette actor modle type of celebrity who hog that page.

Doubly Blessed
One person who is clearly unhappy with the BSE abandoning the badla system is a former president who was its biggest advocate. Soon after BSE announced that it would switch to BLESS (Borrowing and lending of securities ), he told anyone who cared to listen that the BSE's BLESS and the NSE's Albn (Advanced lending and borrowing mechanism ) were both unsafe. To the consternation of the BSE, he managed to whip up enough of a scare for containment measure. A big fear was that financiers of the lending borrowing operation who were allowed to withdraw securities offered as collateral would misuse them, When statistics were examined, the number of shares withdrawn were only three to five percent. The meeting probably set a record for quick decisions when it ended with a face saving decision that shares as collateral would not be withdrawn from the clearing house. Hopefully, SEBI will be a little more careful about the source of its information.

Updated weekly.

The author's e-mail address is: suchetadalal@yahoo.com

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