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Enron Mail |
Enron Corp. Says First-Quarter Profit Rose 20 Percent (Update2)
Bloomberg, 04/17/01 USA: UPDATE 1-Dynegy earnings soar in first quarter. Reuters English News Service, 04/17/01 Electricity Facilities Sprout Near Tiny Tennessee Town --- Merchant Plants Are Raising Question of Who Controls Nation's Power Grid The Wall Street Journal, 04/17/01 Energy Concerns Get Creative in Pursuit Of Names That Are Clever, Yet Practical The Wall Street Journal, 04/17/01 California Reliant Sees Profit Double in 1st Quarter Los Angeles Times, 04/17/01 USA: Enron Corp. beats first-quarter targets. Reuters English News Service, 04/17/01 Enron Q1 EPS up 18 pct, raises FY recurring EPS forecast to 1.75-1.80 usd AFX News, 04/17/01 It's last call for Harris before the lights go out National Post, 04/17/01 India: BMS hits out at Govt. policies The Hindu, 04/17/01 BALCO sale a fraud, Sinha a criminal: RSS veteran The Times of India, 04/17/01 Business on the Web The Hindu, 04/17/01 Centre appoints conciliator for DPC arbitration Business Standard, 04/17/01 Dabhol slaps one more notice on Maharashtra Business Standard, 04/17/01 Enron Corp. Says First-Quarter Profit Rose 20 Percent (Update2) 2001-04-17 08:01 (New York) Enron Corp. Says First-Quarter Profit Rose 20 Percent (Update2) (Adds Enron boosts 2001 forecast in second paragraph.) Houston, April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Enron Corp., the largest energy trader, said first-quarter profit rose 20 percent as sales almost quadrupled. Profit from operations rose to $406 million, or 47 cents, from $338 million, or 40 cents, in the year-earlier period, Enron spokesman Mark Palmer said. Enron raised its 2001 profit forecast to $1.75 to $1.80 a share, from its January projection of $1.70 to $1.75. First-quarter revenue surged to $50.1 billion from $13.1 billion as Enron boosted the volume of power sold in North America by 90 percent. About one-fifth of the increase came from the western U.S., where a California electricity shortage caused power prices to surge. Enron had a first-quarter gain of $19 million, or 2 cents a share, for an accounting change, making net income $425 million, or 49 cents a share. There were no charges or gains in the year- earlier period. The Houston-based company was expected to make 45 cents a share, the average estimate of analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. Estimates ranged from 43 cents to 47 cents. Earnings were released before the market opened. Shares of Enron rose $2.14 to $59.44 yesterday. They have fallen 11 percent in the past year. USA: UPDATE 1-Dynegy earnings soar in first quarter. 04/17/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. HOUSTON, April 17 (Reuters) - Wholesale natural gas and electricity supplier Dynegy Inc., which has been defending itself against allegations of overcharging for power sales in California, said on Tuesday its first-quarter earnings rose 73 percent, driven by a strong performance from its core energy marketing and trading business. Recurring net income jumped to $137.5 million or 41 cents per diluted share from $79.4 million or 26 cents in the first quarter of 2000. The company had already said on April 2 that it expected to report earnings per share of about 40 cents for the quarter. First-quarter revenues rose to $14.2 billion from $5.3 billion, due in part to last year's acquisition of Illinova Corp., parent company of Illinois Power, a regulated power and gas distribution company serving 650,000 customers. Dynegy produced and sold 26.1 million megawatt hours of electricity in the first quarter of 2001, a rise of 19 percent over the same period of 2000. But the volume of natural gas it marketed fell 1.7 percent to 11.4 billion cubic feet a day as lower European volumes outweighed gains in the United States. Houston-based Dynegy said it benefited during the quarter from supply and demand imbalances and energy market volatility which led customers to seek Dynegy's services to protect themselves against sharp swings in natural gas and power prices. Dynegy's stock more than tripled in value in 2000. So far this year its shares have fallen some 5 percent, reflecting broader stock market weakness and concerns about possible fallout from the California power crisis which has already led to rolling blackouts and a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by utility Pacific Gas & Electric, a unit of PG&E Corp.. CALIFORNIA POWER INTERESTS Dynegy has ownership stakes in 13,000 megawatts of U.S. electricity generating capacity, including a 50 percent stake in a joint venture that owns some 2,800 megawatts of capacity in California where wholesale prices have soared in recent months. In March the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered Dynegy and five other companies to refund California utilities for overpriced power sales unless they can justify their high prices. Dynegy has said its prices were just and reasonable. Dynegy has previously said that at the end of February 2001, it was owed some $265 million for power sales to California's troubled utilities and that it had set aside unspecified reserves to cover the risk of default on those payments. The company's Dynegydirect Internet-based trading platform, which was launched late last year, recorded nearly $9 billion in notional transaction value during the first quarter of 2001. Dynegy's fledgling broadband telecommunications business, which began operations in the second half of 2000, posted a first quarter loss of $11.6 million. Dynegy has previously indicated it expects this business to become profitable in the second half of 2002. It is developing a 20,000 mile fiber optic cable network in the United States that is linked to a network of over 8,000 miles in Europe. Dynegy believes rapid growth in demand for broadband network capacity, which is capable of delivering far larger volumes of data than conventional copper cable, will ultimately lead to the trading of network capacity, or bandwidth, as a commodity. Like its hometown rival Enron Corp., Dynegy believes the marketing, trading and risk management skills it has honed in the deregulated U.S. wholesale natural gas and electricity markets will make it a leader in broadband marketing and trading. Recurring net income reported by Dynegy excluded certain one-time items in the first quarter and the same period of 2000. Net income including those items rose to $139.5 million or 41 cents per diluted share from $69 million or 23 cents per share. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Electricity Facilities Sprout Near Tiny Tennessee Town --- Merchant Plants Are Raising Question of Who Controls Nation's Power Grid By John J. Fialka Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal 04/17/2001 The Wall Street Journal A2 (Copyright © 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) NUTBUSH, Tenn. -- This town of about 100 people hasn't seen anything quite this electrifying since the 1950s when a local teenager, Annie Mae Bullock, left town and became Tina Turner, the queen of rock 'n' roll. Power plants are sprouting in the flat, rich cotton fields nearby. One is under construction; another is about to start. Bulldozers are grooming a site for a third. "We think it's great," says Alvin Williams, owner of the Nutbush Grocery and Deli, as he prepares for the surge of construction workers who come in for lunch. While this may seem promising at a time of growing energy shortages, the new plants are part of a power clash that presents the Bush administration and federal and state regulators with one of their knottiest problems: Who controls the nation's power grid? On one side is a new breed of freewheeling energy dealers called merchant traders, spurred by deregulation to generate and trade electricity. Led here by Enron Corp., they build small gas-fired generating plants, but most don't construct their own power lines. Instead, they hook up the plants to existing lines and sell electricity wholesale over long distances when prices peak during the summer. Thus, many of their plants are called "peakers." On the other side are old-line utilities, represented here by the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority. They operate the power lines and warn that the system could become overloaded, leading to blackouts from the imbalance. Near Nutbush here in Tennessee's southwest corner, natural-gas pipelines run from the Gulf Coast and intersect with some of the TVA's 17,000 miles of transmission lines, which are spread over seven Southern states. That is what is making Nutbush boom: It is an attractive place to connect to the grid. By 2003, at least 13 new merchant plants altogether will be hooked up across the TVA's system. There will be dozens more on neighboring systems that will also use TVA lines, says W. Terry Boston, a TVA executive vice president. This year, TVA expects 300,000 requests for wholesale power deals on its system, up from 250,000 last year and just 25,000 in 1996. Mr. Boston foresees a congestion problem that will make it more difficult for the utility to maintain its record of 99% reliability. "This summer is going to be interesting," he says. Combat started here in the spring of 1999, when an Enron plant at nearby Brownsville began bombarding TVA with about 800 requests for summer transmission service, up from 33 the TVA had received from merchant plants the year before. Some were huge, elaborate trades involving brokered electricity from other sources that Enron wanted to ship across the TVA system. Kevin Presto, an Enron vice president, recalled: The TVA "pretty much fought us the whole way, even though they needed the megawatts." That June, TVA pulled the plug, telling Enron that from then on, its wheeling and dealing would be confined to the amount of electricity produced in Enron plants. Enron claimed foul and appealed to the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC,, a voluntary organization of utilities and electricity consumers. Along with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state regulators, NERC functions as the traffic cop for North America's power grid. Enron also sued the TVA and the dispute "raised a number of issues that we are trying to put our fingers on," says Don Benjamin, NERC's director of operations. One upshot is that it is busy rewriting the rules for how the national grid is controlled. The Bush administration's energy task force and Congress are also looking at the control issue and ways to expand the grid's capacity. So far, they have found no easy or inexpensive answers. The grid, with its dense webs surrounding major cities and few links in between, resembles a U.S. highway map from the 1930s before the Interstate system was built. And it is governed by rules that were negotiated by utilities at about that time, as they began to interconnect their systems with their neighbors'. Big utilities became "control areas" that perform the moment-to-moment adjustments that keep lines from overloading and equipment from melting down. With electricity, supply must always match demand. But lately, operators of merchant plants, such as Enron, have also qualified to become control areas. Regulators have ordered utilities to give merchant power plants open access to the grid, though the utilities sometimes curtail access for "reliability" reasons. "This was a very good system," sighs Thomas Overbye, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois. But while merchant plants have more access to the grid, he notes, they have little incentive to build more power lines. "When you restructure that way," asserts Mr. Overbye. "You're going to overload the system, and that's exactly what's happening." NERC's Mr. Benjamin worries that control will get harder this summer. "We've got to be able to look at this and see what effects these deals are having on the whole system," he says. Some ad hoc curtailment of wholesale deals and service to customers may be necessary to protect the grid, but the result will be expensive, he notes. "It means that merchants won't make money on that deal, and that the customer they sold power to will have to buy it from somebody else." In the summer of 1999 there were such 70 curtailments; last summer there were 180. Lynn Church, president of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents 40 merchant power companies and electricity traders, suspects that decisions taken by big utilities for "reliability" reasons are sometimes used to block legitimate competition from her members. To prevent this, her group wants more federal control over the grid. "We're seeing lots of discrimination." The TVA's Mr. Boston counters that his system can't take more "surprises," such as the one on Aug. 19, 1999, when a series of wholesale trades brought the TVA's part of the grid to the brink of collapse from the overload. This year, Enron settled its fight with the TVA with a secret out-of-court settlement. Enron says it is also in the process of selling the plant near here and two others it had hooked to the TVA system to other merchant power producers. But it is still waging war over who controls the grid. In a separate case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Enron argues that FERC has the power to open more of the grid's capacity to merchant power plants. Utility commissioners from several states argue it doesn't. While this is going on, FERC is pondering how to cut back the grid's proliferating number of control areas. Right now there are about 150. According to one FERC expert, who asked not to be identified, to avoid "complications" there should be around 14. Meanwhile, officials in Tina Turner's home turf still want the power plant construction to keep on rocking. "There's going to be others," predicts John Sharpe, the executive of Haywood County, who has been out recruiting more power plants to keep the local economic boost going. "I'm working my pants off to try and make that happen." Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Energy Concerns Get Creative in Pursuit Of Names That Are Clever, Yet Practical By Jon Kamp Dow Jones Newswires 04/17/2001 The Wall Street Journal C17 (Copyright © 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) CHICAGO -- When Houston Natural Gas Corp. acquired InterNorth Inc. in 1985, the combined energy company needed a stylish new name that reflected its national aspirations. Jim Uehling, then an executive vice president at marketing firm Lippincott & Margulies Inc., helped conjure up "Enteron." Top executives loved it, unveiled it and were quickly humiliated when news reports noted that enteron is also a medical term for the human digestive tract. "That was a snafu," said Mr. Uehling, who is now a principal at Kass Uehling Inc., a private consulting firm in New York that he co-founded in 1988. "It was a very embarrassing moment." But the clouds cleared, and the renamed Enron Corp. has evolved into a massive global energy firm with year 2000 revenue of $100.8 billion. It has also become an influential and successful brand name, Mr. Uehling said. Pressured by deregulation and a consolidating industry, other energy companies are hoping to pull off similar transformations punctuated by just the right name. "With a new name you want to convey a new image," said Beth Willis, vice president of corporate communication at Xcel Energy Inc., a company formed in August from the merger of Northern States Power Co. and New Centuries Energy Inc. The chief challenge facing utilities is that the market for actual English words has been cornered, said James Dettore, owner and chief executive officer of Brand Institute Inc., a privately owned marketing firm in Miami. That leaves utilities and their consultants to drum up new words, an effort spurred on by companies' desire to secure intuitive Internet domain names. "Real words are almost impossible to get these days," Mr. Dettore said. Although utilities are eager to drop the obvious "Power & Light" titles, they often gravitate toward names that keep the energy theme intact, then try to spice it up with a dash of dynamism, excellence or synergy. Mr. Uehling helped turn Mid-South Utilities into Entergy Corp. following a corporate turnaround in 1988. The name, picked from a list of hundreds, lets the company come very close to owning the word "energy," Mr. Uehling said. Following that theme, Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. and PSI Resources came up with Cinergy Corp. for their newly formed company in 1994. Dynegy Inc. emerged in 1998. And Mr. Uehling nearly put the name "Primergy" into circulation in 1995 as the moniker for the merged Northern States Power Co. and Wisconsin Electric Power Co. before the deal fell through. The cleverness could come with a price, said Linda Byus, a utilities analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Chicago. Power companies run the risk of turning off some customers when they ditch comfortable old names for new ones that give no indication of what they actually do. A name like Mirant Corp., the new title for power company Southern Energy Inc. unveiled in January, may contain a fancy Latin root, but it doesn't contain much that tells you what the company does. A name like "Cinergy," at least, includes a pun on the company's hometown. "Cinergy is maybe one of the better ones," Ms. Byus said. But plenty of other names, she said, don't work quite as well. Minnesota Power Co. may have missed the mark last year when it renamed itself Allete, a name meant to better reflect the company's growing interest in other businesses like car auctions. The name, a combination of "all" and "elite," has some analysts scratching their heads. "That one looks like they misspelled it," Ms. Byus said. But even when names sound like something familiar, they can still cause confusion. While Allete neighbor Northern States Power avoided the sounds-like-nonsense charge and shunned the sounds-like-energy bandwagon when it chose the name Xcel, it walked right into another problem. Exelon Corp. -- the result of the merger between Commonwealth Edison Co. parent Unicom Corp. and PECO Energy Co. -- charged Xcel with being a copycat. That Exelon shares its name with a Novartis Pharmaceuticals medication for Alzheimer's disease didn't matter to the utility. When it came to electricity, the Exelon name was used first, and company officials warned Xcel when it formed that there were confusing similarities. Xcel kept its name anyway, and it nearly took a trip to federal court in Minnesota last month to resolve the dispute. Xcel, which agreed in a settlement to use the full Xcel Energy name, didn't originally think Exelon had a case -- or much of a name, for that matter. "Exelon sounds synthetic" and doesn't mean anything, Alan Carlson, Xcel's trial lawyer from the Minneapolis firm Merchant & Gould, said before the settlement. "Xcel is a powerful, great name." Asked recently about the meaning of Exelon, co-CEO Corbin McNeill offered, "It promotes excellence." Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Business; Financial Desk California Reliant Sees Profit Double in 1st Quarter From Bloomberg News 04/17/2001 Los Angeles Times Home Edition C-2 Copyright 2001 / The Times Mirror Company Reliant Energy Inc., the owner of Houston's utility and a power supplier in California and other states, said Monday that first-quarter earnings more than doubled on higher profit from energy-trading and natural-gas businesses. Profit from operations rose to $273.5 million, or 94 cents a share, from $133.7 million, or 47 cents, a year earlier, Reliant spokeswoman Sandy Fruhman said. Revenue more than tripled to $13.3 billion. Soaring power prices pushed California's largest utility, PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric unit, into Bankruptcy Court and may cost the state as much as $70 billion in electricity-buying costs this year, lawmakers estimate. Most of that money went to power sellers such as Reliant's trading unit, which had a first-quarter operating profit of $216 million compared with a $22 million loss a year earlier. "It's driven principally by the way-over-average pricing environment in California," Jefferies & Co. analyst Paul Fremont said. Reliant shares rose $1.46 to close at $47 on the New York Stock Exchange. Houston-based Reliant said last year that it would sell 20% of its non-utility businesses, including wholesale power sales and energy trading, to the public by early this year and spin off the rest to shareholders. The $1.46-billion initial stock sale will take place early next month, Chief Executive Steve Letbetter said Monday. Rival power sellers Enron Corp. and Dynegy Inc. are expected to follow Reliant later this week in reporting higher earnings. Power prices along the California-Oregon border averaged more than $288 a megawatt hour in the quarter, more than nine times the year-earlier average. The high prices put generators at risk of not collecting payment from utilities. Reliant set aside $38 million before taxes in the first quarter in case it can't collect money owed for California power sales. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. USA: Enron Corp. beats first-quarter targets. 04/17/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. HOUSTON, April 17 (Reuters) - Energy marketing and trading giant Enron Corp on Tuesday surpassed first quarter earnings estimates on across-the-board increases in revenues, trading volumes and retail energy services contract. The Houston-based company, North America's largest gas and electricity marketer, reported first-quarter earnings per share of 47 cents per share, compared to year-ago EPS of 40 cents. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Financial/First Call had expected Enron, which also has Internet and telecommunications businesses, to earn 45 cents per share. Enron also raised its 2001 earnings target range by five cents, to $1.75-1.80 per share. In January, the company said it expected to earn $1.70-1.75 per share. Enron also said it had a nearly threefold increase in year-over-year revenues, from $13.1 billion in first quarter 2000 to $50.1 billion this year. Enron had suffered some setbacks during the first quarter, including the dissolution of its marquee video on demand deal with Blockbuster Inc.,the trimming of 20 percent of its broadband unit's staff and continuing payment problems with the Dabhol Power Plant in India. The wave of bad news prompted president and chief executive officer Jeff Skilling to hold a mid-quarter conference call to soothe investor concerns after the stock dropped into the $50s, its lowest level since January 2000 and well off its high of $90.56 last August. The stock closed at $59.44 on Monday. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Enron Q1 EPS up 18 pct, raises FY recurring EPS forecast to 1.75-1.80 usd 04/17/2001 AFX News © 2001 by AFP-Extel News Ltd HOUSTON (AFX) - Enron Corp said it has raised its recurring earnings expectation for 2001 to a range of 1.75-1.80 usd per diluted share, up from a forecast of 1.70-1.75 usd made in January. The company disclosed today first quarter diluted earnings per share, excluding nonrecurring items, of 47 cents, above the FirstCall/Thomson consensus estimate of 45 cents. The EPS figure was up 18 pct from the 40 cents posted during the first quarter of last year and excludes a nonrecurring after-tax gain of 19 mln usd, or 2 cents per diluted share, related to the required adoption of new accounting standards, the company said. Revenues rose 281 pct to 50.1 bln usd, up from 13.145 bln last year. Net income excluding nonrecurring items was 406 mln usd, up from 338 mln. Jeff Skilling, Enron's president and chief executive officer, said: "Enron's wholesale business continues to generate outstanding results. Transaction and volume growth are translating into increased profitability." Retail energy services and broadband intermediation activities are "rapidly accelerating", he added. Energy volumes rose 65 pct to 69 trln British thermal unit equivalents per day. New retail energy services contracts were up 59 pct to 5.9 bln usd. Broadband network services delivered increased seven-fold. jmp/jlw For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Financial Post: Editorial Editorial It's last call for Harris before the lights go out Terence Corcoran National Post 04/17/2001 National Post National C19 © National Post 2001. All Rights Reserved. Premiers say the darndest things. Take Ontario's Mike Harris. "Throughout my years at Queen's Park," Mr. Harris said in February, "I've always believed in open, competitive markets because they help keep costs low for consumers and encourage innovation." That was news to me. He may well believe in open markets, but after 6 years in office Ontario's Tories have done nothing to put those beliefs into practice. A dozen trees were privatized a few years ago in Northern Ontario, but otherwise the Harris Tories have been absolute slaves to the statist quo. Name a sector: water, urban transit, education, health care, liquor, beer, intercity bus service, public housing -- we haven't had one innovative idea that might help open markets to competition. For most of the past six years, the ideological lights have been on a dimmer in Tory Ontario. And time is running out; if the Harris government doesn't soon make at least one move toward competitive markets, there will be no reason for anyone to pretend any longer that this Conservative government is anything more than another hack Tory regime clinging to power. The Harris government delivers a Speech from the Throne on Thursday, to be followed that night by the Premier's Dinner, now the most successful annual political fundraiser in the country. It will all look slick and controlled, but unless the government makes a significant move to unravel at least one government monopoly, it will all signify nothing. It would be a good time, in other words, for the Harris government to make a clear statement on the one agenda item they have actually prepared for, electricity deregulation. If they don't do electricity, they might as well just turn the lights out at Queen's Park and go home. It wouldn't take much, just a sentence or two. Here's a draft: "This government has always believed in open, competitive markets because they help keep costs low for consumers and encourage innovation. That's why we're determined to go ahead with our plan to open Ontario's electricity market to competition by November of this year." That's it. End of statement. It might be short, but it would galvanize activity in the power industry. There are short-term practical reasons for the government to make such an announcement. Most of the major players in the power sector are ready for a market opening in November. Hydro One, the new provincial transmission company, is anxious to move forward. Ontario Power Generation, which controls most of the generating capacity in the province, is ready. The Independent Market Operator, which will run the electricity exchange, has started the clock ticking on a critical-path timetable aiming at a November start-up. Many local power distribution companies, including Toronto Hydro, are already promoting competitive retail electricity markets to a population that seems willing. By declaring November the official target date, the government would also send a signal to some of the more reluctant corners of the province. Some local municipal utilities, for example, may need direct prodding from the province and the Ontario Energy Board. But the more important reasons for making a commitment to November are longer term. The main reason for opening up the market is to create a competitive environment that will attract private power generating capacity. If California has any lesson for Ontario, it is that new power generating capacity is essential to meet rising demand. Delays in opening the market and uncertainty have already stalled new investment. Kenneth Lay, the chairman of Enron Corp. of Houston, said his company had planned to have a new generating plant up and running this June, but stopped the project due to uncertainty over deregulation. Ontario needs private-sector investment in electricity, and without deregulation no investment will be made. One alleged obstacle to November deregulation is the continued existence of Ontario Power Generation, which controls about 90% of capacity. The fashionable economic theory is that OPG should be broken up to create a viable competitive market. Even if a breakup is desirable, that's no reason to wait. Competition is competition. If the market is free and barriers to entry are relatively low, the so-called threat of OPG's market power would be quickly neutralized by aggressive competitors such as Enron. At this point in its history, the Harris government cannot be expected to do anything too radical. Do not buy shares in a company that plans to run school boards or take over the Toronto Transit Commission. But most of the hard work has already been done in electricity. With the flick of a switch, the Harris government could turn its ideological lights back on. If it doesn't do electricity, it will never do anything. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. India: BMS hits out at Govt. policies Our Special Correspondent 04/17/2001 The Hindu Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd (KSL); Source: World Reporter (TM) - Asia Intelligence Wire NEW DELHI, APRIL 16. Raising a war cry against the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Friend, the World Bank and the Union Government for anti-labour, anti-farmer and anti- poor policies, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, trade union wing of the Sangh Parivar, today warned the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance Government to either correct these policies to protect the sovereignty of the nation and interests of its people, or face the wrath of the masses. The BMS demanded the scrapping of the Enron agreement and reversal of the policy of privatisation of PSUs. It demanded a probe into the Enron deal and probes into the privatisation of the Modern Food Industries and BALCO. Addressing a rally at the Ramlila Ground here to mark the beginning of a "mass movement" against the WTO and the "anti- labour policies" of the Central Government, the BMS chief and founder of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and Swadeshi Jagran Manch, Mr. Dattopant Thengadi, bitterly criticisied the NDA Government for its "anti-national and anti-people policies". He accused it of betrayal for giving in to the threats of economically powerful nations and in the process sacrificing national interests. Opposed to MNCs The fact that those leading the Government happened to be friends would not deter the BMS from opposing the Government, Mr. Thengadi said; the BMS only preached and practiced the objective policies of responsive cooperation. "We will oppose the Government which opposes the interests of the nation, people and its workers. We oppose multinationals. We will oppose the Government which supports multinationals." Referring to the concern expressed in certain quarters about the impact of the movement on the future of the Government, Mr. Thengadi said, "Our rally will not push out the Government. The Government is pushing itself out. If it goes, it will go because of its wrong policies. Governments have come and gone in the past too." Mr. Thengadi said they were hoping that the Government would resist the threat of sanctions from powerful nations controlling the WTO. This had not happened. Instead of succumbing to such pressures and diktats, the Government, he said, should challenge these nations to enforce sanctions. "We might suffer initially, for about a year and a half at the maximum, and then the economy would prosper again." His logic was "America needs India more than India needs America"; if Vietnam could bring such a powerful country to its knees, India could do it too. 'Form parallel WTO' Asking the Government to quit the WTO, Mr. Thengadi said India should take the lead in forming a powerful block of developing countries within the WTO in order to secure favourable and equitable terms for continuing its membership. He even suggested that the Government "take a bold initiative to form a second WTO along with other developing countries to guard against exploitation of the poor and the developing countries. Let it be a rival WTO." And if the Government failed, "we will try to do it". He said the trade union movement had gained in strength because of the Government's wrong policies; the movement was emerging as a rallying point for not only workers but also poor farmers, traders and common people. He attacked the privatisation of even profit-making PSUs including BALCO. Like Modern Food Industries, BALCO was sought to be privatised. He saw no justification for such action. He blamed politicians, bureaucrats and private vested interests for manipulating the privatisation of PSUs which have been deliberately rendered sick for extraneous considerations. He demanded a probe into the privatisation of both these industries saying the deals smacked of corruption. Similarly, the Enron deal should not only be scrapped but also be probed and the guilty punished. While terming the Union Disinvestment Minister, Mr. Arun Shourie, an honest man, Mr. Thengadi said the privatisation of Modern Food Industries was "a fraud by bureaucrats". Sinha, a 'criminal' Attacking the latest budget initiatives, particularly the announcement that contract labour as well as hire-and-fire policy would be permitted, Mr. Thengadi called the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, a "criminal". He was guilty of a grave constitutional impropriety in that he made announcements to change the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Labour Act even as these issues were pending before the National Labour Commission. Mr. Thengadi said Mr. Sinha had "committed a crime of encroaching upon the legitimate jurisdiction of the Labour Ministry". Like other Finance Ministers, he too was gripped by "amnesia" ever since he assumed charge. Prior to him, Dr. Manmohan Singh, who had authored the report on 'Challenges to the South' on economic colonisation, on becoming Finance Minister started acting against what he had professed. The national BMS president, Mr. R.B. Shah, criticised the policy of privatisation saying the BJP before coming to power had swadeshi on its agenda but unfortunately was pursuing the new economic policies more vigorously. "For the implementation of these policies eight committees were formed and no one from workers or farmers, who are the direct victims, were taken on the committees. The BMS from time to time apprised the Government of the real situation, but in vain." Workers from all over the country participated in the rally and dispersed after burning an effigy of the WTO. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. BALCO sale a fraud, Sinha a criminal: RSS veteran The Times of India News Service 04/17/2001 The Times of India Copyright (C) 2001 The Times of India; Source: World Reporter (TM) NEW DELHI: Dattopant Thengadi, veteran RSS leader and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's contemporary in the Sangh Parivar, has challenged the government to mend its economic policies or risk losing power. In a vitriolic attack on the government's economic policies at a rally here on Monday, Thengadi, who helped raise the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, one of the country's biggest labour organisations, called Finance Minister Yaswhant Sinha a ``criminal'' for usurping the labour ministry's constitutional rights. In a speech dripping with sarcasm, Thengadi's attack on Vajpayee's charisma and image was thinly veiled. He opened his speech with a reference to media's capacity to do ``image building.'' Quoting from management guru Peter Drucker's book Beware of Charisma, Thengadi said: ``A country cannot progress merely by building one or two persons' image. Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini are examples of image-building destroying personalities and their organisations.'' The 81-year-old Sangh leader sought a committee to enquire into the profitability of public sector companies. ``I want to testify before an enquiry that bureaucrats are deliberately turning the public sector companies into loss-making.'' He accused bureaucrats of making their own deals with the new promoters and ensuring the PSUs' sale to these private promoters. ``Modern Food was sold for a throwaway price, now it is sick. The same fate awaits BALCO. Arun Shourie is an honest minister, but there was pressure from above and bureaucrats too misled him. It (BALCO sale) is a fraud,'' he said. Though not named, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, who was finance minister in Vajpayee's 13-day government, too was not spared. Referring to that BJP government, Thengadi asked, ``Who gave Enron the counter-guarantee? Enron deal should be scrapped, those who agreed for it should be identified and punished.'' As finance minister, Jaswant Singh had agreed to the counter-guarantee. Thengadi was blunt in his warning to the government: If the government wants to protect multinational companies, drive the farmers and small-scale industrialists to suicide by flooding the market with cheap imports, and sell off profit-making public sector companies, the people will pull down the government. The choicest rebuke was reserved for Finance Minister Sinha. Reminding Sinha of his Swadeshi Jagran Manch (Thengadi founded SJM too) days, Thengadi said whoever occupies the finance minister's seat suffered from amnesia after assuming office. SJM had met in Nagpur shortly before the BJP came to power. Sinha as part of the central leadership vociferously opposed to India joining the WTO and, in fact, wanted the country to quit WTO. ``I am in search of a medicine to treat him for amnesia. They suddenly forget what they are, where they have come from, and what they are wearing. Sinha has encroached upon the jurisdiction of the labour ministry while making 85 lakh people vulnerable to the hire and fire policy. It is a crime against the Constitution. He is a criminal minister,'' Thengadi said. Even Thengadi's call for a rival World Trade Organisation was well argued. He said he has information about an attempt to form a developing countries' caucus within the WTO. He argued that India as the largest developing nation should lead this caucus, fight ``the club of fraudulent countries, who have put the WTO together for their interests.'' The rival WTO, Thengadi said, ``is a reality which will happen despite the government's wishes.'' Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Business on the Web 04/17/2001 The Hindu Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd (KSL); Source: World Reporter (TM) - Asia Intelligence Wire DIGITAL CAPITAL - Harnessing the power of business webs: Don Tapscott, David Ticoll and Alex Lowy; Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London. Distributed by Rupa and Co; Post Box No. 12333, 15, Bankim Chatterjee Street, College Square, Calcutta- 700073. 11.99. AT THE height of its popularity - and commercial success - as the preferred chip to put under the hood of your PC, Intel's Pentium processor suffered a body blow, a few years ago, that the company will not easily forget. A small glitch in how the chip performed floating point calculations - and Intel's initial arrogant and hamhanded treatment of customer complaints - resulted in a barrage of adverse publicity spreading like wild fire across the Internet. Jokes were posted and gleefully exchanged among Intel users: "What's the difference between a nine-year-old kid and the Pentium chip? A nine-year-old can do long division." The company learned the hard way about brand vulnerability in the digital economy and had to do some costly firefighting before it regained lost ground. Making money in the Internet Age is more than a mere matter of "attracting eyeballs" to one's e-commerce website. Tapscott, Ticoll and Lowy are respectively, Chairman, CEO and MD of Alliance for Converging Technologies, a firm of e-biz consultants. Together they have pooled their considerable experience to write a fast-paced, survival guide for those who have ambitions of surviving and profiting from the new Internet way of doing business. The authors define digital economy as the internetworking of three types of knowledge assets: human capital (what people know), customer capital (who you know) and structural capital (how what you know can be built into the business system). To drive home the point they review how the Internet has become an awesome structure for collaboration, with "apps on taps" - application tools aplenty. It has created new "mantras" like "Content is king" and made possible hitherto unworkable business practices like "coopetition" - companies that cooperate in some areas to compete with each other, in a larger arena. The book provides some striking stories of companies that have leveraged these new models to create success stories - the auction sites like "e-Bay", online book sellers like "Amazon", air travel bargain ticketing like "priceline" and direct selling of "made to order" PCs as pioneered by Dell. It also analyses how a power supplier like Enron has reinvented itself as a provider of broadband telecom services; how a "rogue" airline operator like Virgin, encashed its considerable goodwill to set up a Tele-bank. The errors of the pre-Net years are recalled to underline how essential it has become for e-commerce players to give up competing on "petty, parochial and proprietary differentiators". The classic case of corporate shame was how the software giants in the 1980s lost the opportunity of coming together and creating a truly customer-friendly operating system with Unix, because of their predatory and monopolistic pricing tactics. The mindset of that generation of proprietors was shaken; but like James Bond's martini, not stirred. The authors suggest that with Linux, the new "open" system created by a Finnish student, that mistake is not about to be repeated. The book is prescient in some notable ways; it warns of the dangers of aggressive patent regimes in a nascent technology, quoting some bizarre recent cases; companies trying to patent Internet selling models like e-auctions, or bargain airfares, which they compare to a notorious surgeon in the U.S. who patented a new technique in cataract surgery and tried to prevent others from using it. However, in the few months since the book was written, some of the top stocks in Nasdaq - like Amazon, Yahoo and e-Bay - have faced hard times and the gleaming success stories begin to appear a mite tarnished. It only underlines the central theme of this stimulating, consistently readable book that the digital economy is central to today's competitive commercial strategy. The best ones succeed, but many fall by the wayside of the Information superhighway. ANAND PARTHASARATHY Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Centre appoints conciliator for DPC arbitration Santosh Tiwary NEW DELHI 04/17/2001 Business Standard 2 Copyright © Business Standard The Centre has appointed Justice B P Jeevan Reddy, chairman, Law Commission as its conciliator to find a solution to the payment problem between Dabhol Power Company (DPC) and Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB). DPC had appointed Lawrence Street, former chief justice of New South Wales, Australia as its conciliator last week. The Enron-promoted company issued a notice for conciliation or arbitration to the Centre on 4 April for not honouring its counter-guarantee for MSEB's December bills of Rs 102 crore. Finance ministry sources said that the government has already informed DPC about Justice Reddy's appointment as its conciliator. DPC sources confirmed that the company had received a communique in this regard from the Union finance ministry. "Both the parties will soon sit together and appoint an independent conciliator to complete the job within a time-frame of 60 days," said a DPC spokesperson. Issuing the notice, DPC had said, "This step was necessary in order to preserve our rights in the project, and to ensure that all parties honour their existing contractual obligations." The notice to the Centre was issued by DPC after the former conveyed to the company that until the availability penalty issue was resolved, it did not intend to pay the December bill under the counter-guarantee. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Dabhol slaps one more notice on Maharashtra Our Corporate Bureau Mumbai 04/17/2001 Business Standard 1 Copyright © Business Standard The game of notices and counter-notices continues. The Enron-promoted Dabhol Power Company (DPC) has fired a fresh salvo at the Maharashtra government by slapping another arbitration notice. This time it is for not honouring the state government guarantee for the January 2001 and December 2000 bills. DPC stated in a communique, "DPC has issued a notice of arbitration to the government of Maharashtra for failing to honour its obligations. The state government repeatedly failed to honour its guarantee including towards there December 2000 and January 2001 bills and in respect of interest on late payments." "This action is one of a number of steps DPC is taking to protect its rights and the rights of its stakeholders. Other recent actions included declaring political force majeure under the power purchase agreement and calling upon the government of India to commence the conciliation process over their failure to honour the counter-guarantee for December, 2000," the notice said. "We will give DPC an appropriate reply soon," said a senior state government official, reacting to the DPC missive. The notice has caught power industry observers by surprise as the Union government and DPC are trying to resolve the counter-guarantee tangle on the December bill through the conciliation process. Copyright , 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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