Piramal Health signed a deal to buy US based Minrad for $40 mn
December 23, 2008
Reuters:
Pharma company Piramal Healthcare Ltd said on Tuesday that it has signed a deal to buy US based inhalation anaesthetics maker Minrad International Inc for about US $40 million in cash and debt.
Ghajini Review - Full Return on Money
December 23, 2008
Ghajini Review
Anupama Chopra, Consulting Editor, Films, NDTV
At the recently held Indian Screenwriters’ Conference in Mumbai writer-director Abbas Tyrewala lamented the lack of villains in Bollywood. He said that clearly defined villains used to be our staple diet.
This was true until sometime in the mid-1990s, when happy smiling families and yuppies in designer clothes took over. Well, I’m happy to report that the villain is back.
Ghajini, played ferociously by Pradeep Singh Rawat, is the kind of villain who wears thick gold chains and rings on every finger. He is defiantly brutal - he runs a pharmaceutical company but for reasons never explained, he likes to smash iron rods into human heads and forces young girls into both prostitution and organ trade.
He has one gold tooth, wears shiny white shoes and keeps a posse of henchmen so ugly that they look like they were airlifted from Ram Gopal Varma’s last film. And of course Ghajini routinely drops lines like: aise marenge ki uska nakhun bhi nahi milega and my personal favourite: short-term memory loss patient mujhe kya yaad dilaayega.
Ghajini, director A R Murugadoss’s remake of his Tamil blockbuster, is a throw back to what Hindi films used to be: a three hour-extravaganza of romance, comedy, action, set-piece songs and drama.
It’s a standard-issue revenge film given a fresh twist with a dash of Christopher Nolan’s critically-acclaimed Memento. Like that film, the protagonist here, Sanjay Singhania played by Aamir Khan, was hit on the head and suffers from short-term memory loss. He cannot remember anything for more than 15 minutes.
So, he tattoos his body with instructions: the most important one being that his girlfriend Kalpana was murdered and he must find the murderer and kill him. The film is riddled with logical loopholes but Murugadoss, who also wrote it, doesn’t give you enough time to think about them.
So, you never ask how Sanjay, the fabulously wealthy owner of a cellphone company, conducts a lengthy romance with Kalpana, played by debutant Asin, pretending to be an ordinary man. Or why Ghajini, a master-thug and expert killer, doesn’t have a gun when he needs it most. Or why the key conflict, which leads to Kalpana’s death, is such a random imposition on the script.
Instead, you are caught up in the mystery of how a superbly stylish businessman becomes a killing machine who routinely cracks necks and in his introduction scene, plunges a broken tap into a man’s stomach. Ghajini isn’t for the faint-hearted. The violence is gory and elemental-the climax is pure man-on-man combat with lots of crunching bones.
For Aamir, Ghajini is a 360 degree turn from the sensitive teacher he played in Taare Zameen Par. With a buffed up, eight-pack body, here he is a brutal killer in a murderous rage. Watch him as he explodes with grief and then just as quickly, forgets. It’s a memorable performance.
Thankfully Asin is less animated than she was in the Tamil version. Some of their romantic scenes and particularly her death are nicely done.
Ghajini isn’t a great film or even a very good one but I recommend that you see it. It is, as we used to say in the old days, paisa vasool.
Sanyo going Panasonic way for $9 billion
December 20, 2008
Panasonic to acquire Sanyo
Panasonic has begun a 800 billion yen ($9 billion) takeover of Japanese rival Sanyo, hoping that transforming into one of the world’s biggest electronics companies will help it weather the toughest business conditions in a century.
The deal is the first major realignment of Japan’s electronics industry since the start of the economic crisis, which has led companies to suspend production as consumer demand dries up. Top shareholders, including Goldman Sachs, had been haggling over the price with Panasonic Corp. since it expressed interest in Sanyo last month, but Friday revealed they’d settled on a tender offer price of 131 yen ($1.47) a share. The deal would also allow Panasonic, which makes Viera TVs and Diga Blu-ray disc players, to take advantage of struggling Sanyo’s green businesses in solar panels and rechargeable batteries.
Sanyo, which started off making bicycle lamps after World War II, has cut thousands of jobs as it attempts to return to profit. Sanyo’s July-September profit dwindled to about a third of what it was a year earlier to 4.4 billion yen ($49 million) as a stronger Japanese currency, rising raw material costs and declining gadget prices hurt earnings. Panasonic’s quarterly profit slumped 16 percent to 55.5 billion yen ($624 million).
“I think it is very positive for Panasonic. They will probably buy this company at a bargain price and they will have an entry into solar and become the leader of lithium-ion batteries. It’s exactly what they needed,” the analyst said.
Panasonic should not have any problems financing an acquisition given it is sitting on Rs.50,036.39 crore ($10 billion) of cash.
The two companies would together have revenues of 11.2 trillion yen, based on forecasts for the year to March 2009, surpassing projected 10.9 trillion yen at Hitachi Ltd, currently Japan’s top electronics firm in sales.
Understand the potential of nanotechnology
November 28, 2008
Nanotechnology is one of the main new developing areas recognized by Indian government in past 5 years and thus there has been a topic of growing interest for companies both domestic and foreign for the various Indian Government policies and incentives to start nanotechnology companies in India.
About Nanotechnology Course offered in India:
Nano- technology courses educate an individual on the development and modification of devices with atomic precision where the dimension of particles are less than 100 nanometers. It is widely applied in nano-electronics and nano devices, converging physics, biology, engineering, chemistry and computer science. Important breakthroughs have been achieved in the fields of gene chip designing, application of fat soluble vitamins in aqueous beverage, designing of stain repellent textiles, automobile industry, space research organizations, nano crystal installation in bumps, designing of electrically conductive nano- polymers, nanostructed materials in photographic films and devising bio- mimetic paints.
