Nandini Goswami. KOLKATA

On the back of the economicdownturn and cut down inpremium rates in the de-tar-iffed regime, growth in the al-most Rs 30,000 crore generalinsurance industry more thanhalved, to just 6% in the firstquarter of the current fiscal.Growth in Q1 last year wasover 15%.

Data available with DNAMoney suggests that grosswritten premium in the Junequarter grew to Rs 9,260 crore.

Also in a marked trend,public sector general insur-ance companies have growntheir gross written premiumduring Q1, while establishedprivate players have seen a de-growth.

The four state-owned firmsregistered a 7% growth and al-most all the established pri-vate insurance firms barringa couple, registered a de-growth. Collectively, estab-lished private players haveseen a de-growth of around 8%in the June quarter. Newer pri-vate players, however, havegrown, given their low base.

Among nationalised gener-al insurers, United India grewby 14%. Oriental Insuranceand New India Assurancegrew their premium by 10%and 7% respectively. National

Insurance, however, regis-tered a de-growth of 2%.

The public sector insurers,which saw a dent in their pre-mium income in the earlierphases of deregulation have re-versed the trend, said an in-dustry observer. “Renewals inbusiness and strong marketingefforts like tie-ups in motor andhealth have helped them recoupsome of their lost share in busi-

ness”, the source said.Public sector companies

have gained market share fromthe established private playersin the last two quarters.

If statistics are anything togo by, then the first quarter hasshown some disturbing trendsfor established private playersin the market except for 3-4players, like Royal Sundaramand Cholamandalam have

grown faster than the industryat 10% and 17% respectively. If-fco Tokio has also registered apositive growth of 4%.

Reliance General, once thefastest growing general insur-er, has hardly grown its grosspremium income in Q1, whileplayers such as ICICI Lombardand Bajaj Allianz General haveseen a de-growth of 21% and13% respectively. Tata AIG Gen-eral saw a de-growth of 10% inthe first quarter.

Owing to their late entry, pri-vate companies such as FutureGenerali and Universal Sompohave seen high growth num-bers. HDFC Ergo, which re-structured its business at a lat-er stage, grew gross writtenpremium by 247% in the April-June quarter.

G_NANDINI@DNAINDIA.NET

General insurers’ growth more than halvesIn the quarterended June, grosswritten premiumgrew 6% to Rs 9,260 crore

Pranav Nambiar. BANGALORE

For many years, filing ITreturns was a dreaded affair.But not anymore. Apart fromthe Saral form, a gamut ofe-filing portals now promiseto make it a cinch.

And street-smart account-ants and web-savvy techieshave also found it the easiestway to make hay while the I-Tsun shines. With the D-day—July 31 — fast approaching,e-filing portals like e-lagaan.com, taxyogi.com,taxsmile.com and taxspan-ner.com, have increased theirsales pitch.

The filing is undertakensolely by individuals withthe help of instructions pro-vided on the website. Afterfiling your returns on thesesites, one can make payments online and postprintouts as documentaryproof to the post office inBangalore’s Electronic City.

“Around 27 lakh income-tax assessees filed their tax returns via electronic route inthe last assessment year (08-09), up from 10 lakhs in theprevious year,” said Ravi Jagannathan, CEO, consumer

services division, 3i Infotech.Going by this year’s response,industry insiders expect thisto increase to 45 lakhs.Thiswould effectively mean thataround 10% of the tax returnswill be filed electronically.

“E-filing takes a few min-utes to complete. There is noneed for filing or submittingreturns with IT authorities.As it saves time and money, e-filing is becoming very popu-lar,” Jaganathan added.Around 60% of the users arein the 22-32 years age bracketas the adoption of technologyis higher among youth, headded.

According to GL Rungta,director, eLagaan.com., these

portals are more user-friend-ly. “It follows a questionnaireformat that is easy to navigateeven for people who are not fa-miliar with finance,” he said.

E-Lagaan.com waslaunched about two monthsback by a group of charteredaccountants (CAs) and engi-neers. It is getting around2,000 hits daily. “E-filing ismuch cheaper than using theservices of a CA for physicalfiling. While our servicescome as cheap as Rs 149, a CAcan charge you several timeshigher,” added Rungta. Ban-galore-based tax expert AGKrishnan said e-filing is amatter of habit and thoughusers might have trouble to

start off with it, things will become much simpler in thesubsequent years.

However, old habits diehard. A CA, who did not wantto be named, said thoughsome people have taken to e-filing, hard copies are still theorder of the day.

“It will take time before peo-ple warm up to the idea as in-formation safety is an issue.And Indians have a strongbond of trust with their CAs,”he said.

Moroever, e-filing portalscannot help you evade tax un-like a CA, who will also adviceyou on many other nuances,he quipped.

N_PRANAV@DNAINDIA.NET

Sobia Khan. BANGALORE

Banks and financial institu-tions, which lent close to Rs1,900 crore to the city-basedreal estate player Sobha De-velopers Ltd, have agreed toreschedule part of its debt,bringing some relief to therealty group.

Confirming the deve-lopment, Sobha Developers’managing director J C Shar-ma said, “The company hasmanaged to reschedule a sub-stantial part of its loan port-folio.” However, he did notelaborate on the same.

“Almost all the financialinstitutions have realignedloans and our target is tobring down the debt to equi-ty ratio of 0.5 by this fiscalfrom the current 0.85,” headded. Of the total debt of Rs1,900 crore, Sobha will be ableto repay Rs 1,130 crore on eas-ier timelines.

Sobha has also refinanced

or rescheduled its near-termdebt to match its expectedcash flows. The realty majoris currently paying an aver-age rate of interest of around13% and has an annual in-terest outgo of Rs 240 crore .It also has fixed overheads ofRs 60 crore. “We are lookingat operational improvementsand plan to bring down thedebt through land monetisa-tion, QIP and private equitydeals,” Sharma said.

Instead of paying Rs 960

crore and Rs 460 crore inFY10 and FY11 respectivelyas per rescheduled time-lines, Sobha will pay an eas-ier Rs 450 crore and Rs 690crore in the same period, ananalyst said.

The company is looking tomop-up anywhere between Rs1,200 – 1,400 crore by selling itsland parcels at a premium.These parcels totalling up to475 acres were valued betweenRs 600-800 crore sometimeback, according to marketsources. However, Sharma re-fused to give any specific de-tails on the same.

Sobha recently raisedaround Rs 530 crore by dilut-ing close to 22.5% equitythrough a qualified institu-tional placement (QIP).

The company intends touse Rs 410 crore of the QIPproceeds to reduce part of thedebt, a report by Enam Securities said.

K_SOBIA@DNAINDIA.NET

Tax pundits makehay with e-filing

Carter Dougherty

Porsche on Thursday fired WendelinWiedeking, the high-profile CEO whorejuvenated the nearly bankrupt mak-ers of sports cars in the early 1990s,but stumbled as a huge debt load tor-pedoed plans to take over the muchlarger Volkswagen concern, whichwill now absorb Porsche instead.

In a meeting Porsche also green-lighted plans for its new CEO, MichaelMacht, to complete an investment bythe government of Qatar as a preludeto the creation of an integrated auto-mobile company that would makePorsche the 10th brand in Volkswa-gen's stable

“The merger with Volkswagen is adone-deal now,” said Ferdinand Du-denhoeffer, director of the Center forAutomotive Studies at the Universityof Duisburg-Essen.

Alluding to Audi, the premiumbrand that Volkswagen turned into aprofitable franchise in US and else-where, the CEO of Volkswagen, Mar-tin Winterkorn, outlined plans for aPorsche that could rely on the largercompany's economies of scale whileprotecting its brand in the eyes of itscustomers.

“We can call on our considerableexperience in the integration ofproud and successful brands rich intradition,” Winterkorn said. “Like

Audi today, Porsche can also continueits independent development underthe aegis of Volkswagen and preserveits own identity.” Porsche's board ap-proved a 5 billion euro, or $7.1 billion,capital increase and said that the “ul-timate goal” was to create an “inte-grated car manufacturing company”out of Porsche and Volkswagen.

If Volkswagen is going to buy upPorsche's shares as a prelude to full in-tegration in the larger company, Qatarmay simply wait and invest in Volk-swagen itself as part of the process,analysts said. Porsche said Thursdaythat Wiedeking would walk away witha 50-million euro severance package,or more than $71 million. NYT

Porsche fires CEO in prelude to VW buyout

Sobia Khan. BANGALORE

Mukesh Ambani’s RelianceRetail Ltd (RRL) plans to addmore sparkle to its jewelleryformat — Reliance Jewels.The retail major is looking toinvest Rs 500 crore to add 25more stores to the existing 18under this format by the endof this financial year. Thestores will measure anywherebetween 3,000 – 8,000 sft.

Bijou Kurien, president andchief executive, lifestyle, RRL,said “Reliance Jewels hasbeen a major revenue driverfor us in the lifestyle space.”The firm, which has presencein Bangalore, Jamshedpurand Hyderabad, took its storetally to 18 from the existing 12during the last six months.This company is also lookingto expand the footprint of oth-er formats like Reliance Time-Out and Reliance Vision Ex-press. Reliance Time Out, aone-stop stationery shop, willhave 15 stores by this year-end. According to Kurien,

RRL is also looking step uppresence in the $900-millionorganised optical wear mar-ket which is growing at 15-20%y-o-y. Vision Express is a jointventure between Reliance Re-tail and Dutch optical retailerPearle Europe.

Reliance plans to take the to-tal stores under the Vision Ex-press to 102 by March 2010 fromthe present 22. By 2015, thenumber will go up to 500 out-lets. Reliance Time Out, VisionExpress and Reliance Jewelcome under the RRL fold.

Reliance Jewels getsRs 500 cr prop-up

Sobha gets nod to redoRs1,900-cr debt math

Close to 45 lakh income taxassessees areexpected to filereturns online

PTI. MUMBAI

Reliance Industries (RIL)on Friday reported 11.5%fall in net profit at Rs 3,636crore for the first quarter ofthe this fiscal on falling re-fining margins and reduc-tion in fuel demand in thetime of global recession.

The company’s profitwas Rs 4,110 crore in thesame period last fiscal. Thedecline in profit for theJune quarter is the thirdstraight fall for the refin-ing major. RIL earned $7.5on turning every barrel ofcrude oil into fuel in theApril-June quarter as op-

posed to a gross refiningmargin of $15.7 a barrel inthe period a year ago.

Refining accounted for65% of its revenue, thoughrevenue from refiningdropped 22.72% to Rs25,180 crore from Rs 32,587crore in the same periodlast year.

Turnover is down by22.89% to Rs 32,056 crorecompared to Rs 41,579crore in the year-ago peri-od. RIL, which shed theonly-for-exports tag for itsold. Jamnagar refinery inApril, converted 7.96 mil-lion tonnes of crude oilinto product against 8.13MT in Q1 of last fiscal.

Exports halved to 2.7MT as demand in US andEurope dipped.

Export revenuesdropped by a massive38.5% to Rs 17,433 crore inQ1, the company said,adding that it sold highervolumes of naphtha, dieseland gasoline domestically.

Basic earning pershare, an indicator of theprofitability of the com-pany’s share, for the quar-ter was Rs 23.1 against Rs28.3 for the same periodlast year, it said.

RIL closed down 1.20 %at Rs 2,013.75 on the BSE.

Plans to launch 25stores by the end ofthis financial year

Reuters. New York

Microsoft Corp posted thefirst-ever drop in annualsales of Windows and itsquarterly revenuefell a steeper-than-expected 17%, asits business con-tinued to behurt by theweak global PCand servermarkets.

“Our busi-ness continuedto be negatively im-pacted by weak-ness in the globalPC and server mar-kets,” said ChrisLiddell, chief fi-nancial officer atMicrosoft. “In lightof that environ-ment, it was anexcellent achieve-ment to deliver over$750 million ofoperational savingscompared to the prioryear quarter.”

The news sent Microsoftshares down 8% and took theshine off a big US stock mar-ket rally earlier in the daythat had driven the DowJones industrial average DJIabove 9,000 points.

The world's largest soft-ware maker, whose operatingsystems power the vast ma-jority of the world's person-al computers, offered littlehope for a turnaround intechnology until next year,despite recent optimismfrom rival InternationalBusiness Machines Corp andchip maker Intel Corp.

Investors have overlookednegative news

from compa-nies like Dell

Inc, whichsells its wares

directly tocustomers

and whichwarned last week

of profit margincontraction andweak demand fromcorporate buyers ofPCs. “We still seeconditions beingchallenging for thebalance of this cal-endar year,” Lidelladded. “At least se-quentially, we are

seeing a little bitof growth. While

things are not neces-sarily getting better,

they may have bottomedout,” said Liddell.Microsoft reported fiscal

fourth quarter net profitdropped 29% of $3.04 billion,compared with $4.297 billion,in the year-ago quarter. Salesfell 17% to $13.1 billion, miss-ing analysts' average estimateof $14.48 billion.

Weak PC salesshuts the door on Windows

Microsoft postsfirst-ever drop inWindows sales;revenue dives 17%

Slim refinerymargins

slump RIL Q1net by 11.5%

rofingsprior

sthe

out,”Micr

REPORTCARD

Q4 profit at$3.04 bn

Analysts’ forecast$4.28 bn

Sales dippedto $13.1 bn

COVER DRIVEPPuubblliicc sseeccttoorr companies have gained market share fromthe established private players in the last two quarters

TThhee ffoouurr state-owned firms registered a 7% growth andalmost all the established private insurance firms barringa couple, registered a de-growth

EEssttaabblliisshheedd pprriivvaattee players have seen a de-growth ofaround 8% in the June quarter

Wendelin Wiedeking

Mukesh Ambani

www.dnaindia.com

epaper.dnaindia.comBangalore,

Saturday, July 25, 2009 11TOP NEWSMONEYspeedread

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It comes with a RAM size of 256 MB and a 3.5mm headphone socket

The smartphone is priced at $199.99 and will reach thestores by November 30

‘ITC NOT TO EXITCIGARETTE BIZ’Kolkata: ITC chairman Y C Deveshwar on Fridaysaid the company would not exit its once bread andbutter cigarette business,although it would continuediversifying into more new areas of business.Replying to shareholdersqueries at the 98th annualgeneral meeting of the company here, he said:“We want to diversify,but also not give up the established business ofcigarettes.” The non-cigarette portfolio ofITCs business, which includes hospitality and apparels, contributes morethan 51% of the netturnover.

UNITED BREWERIESPROFIT UP 54%Mumbai: Liquor major United Breweries net profit increased 54% to Rs 355.5 crore for the quarter ended June 30 from Rs 225.9 crore in thesame period a year ago.Total sales by the company stood at Rs 5,564.5crore during the period under review, growing by 17.24% from the previous correspondingquarter’s figure ofRs 4,746.2 crore. Interestcharges paid went up in the first quarter to Rs.170.7 crore from Rs.127.1 crore. Earnings per share stood at Rs1.39from Rs 0.87 in the corre-sponding previous period.

FORTIS Q1 NETSWELLS TO RS 7 CRNew Delhi: Fortis HealthcareLtd (FHL) has recorded morethan seven-fold growth innet profit at Rs 7.55 croreduring the first quarter 2009-10, as against Rs 94 lakh dur-ing the same quarter last fis-cal.Consolidated Q1 sales ofFHL, which operates a net-work of 28 hospital in Indiaand abroad, were up 27% atRs 188.54 crore as against thesame period in 2008-09. Ithad sales of Rs 148.35 crorein Q1 2008-09. The companysaid all the hospitals of FHLperformed “exceedinglywell” with Escorts Heart Institute and Research Cen-tre (EHIRC), Delhi, and For-tis Escorts, Jaipur, recordinga 50% jump in revenue.

BOSCH NET DIPS14% AT RS 188 CRMumbai: Auto-componentmaker Bosch on Friday re-ported a fall of 14% in its netprofit for the quarter endedJune 30 to Rs 188.27 crore,over the corresponding peri-od a year ago. The companyhad a net profit of Rs 219.72crore during the April-Junequarter in the last financialyear (2008-09), Bosch said in afiling to the BSE.Bosch fol-lows a January-December fi-nancial year. Total incomealso fell to Rs 1,311.33 crore inApril-June 2009-10 from Rs1,335.67 crore of the same pe-riod a year earlier. Shares ofBosch rose 3.26% from itspreviousclose and were at Rs3,550 in afternoon trade onthe BSE.

‘CRISIS FAILED TO SUPPLY CREDIT’

The financial crisis of the past twoyears show the financial system

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- Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary