Stock Watch

The media reports suggest that the benchmark discount rate of the Central Bank of Kuwait was cut by 50 basis points to 2.5% on Sunday. This has come as the first reduction in nine months.

Tata Steel, the world's eighth-largest steel maker ascended by 9 percent in sales in January to 5.56 lakh tones. Last year’s sale of the company in January was 5.11 lakh tones.

The Major of the company told that there was increase of 8 percent in sales of flat steel products and 10 per cent in long steel products. Flat steel products are consumed by automobiles while other one is consumed by infrastructure firms.

The online payments service PayPal has initiated an unusual step of banning many transactions in India for more than a week. In the list of services banned in India by paypal, customers can not send and receive money on personal account.

“Personal payments to and from India are being blocked,” revealed a spokesman for the service said Saturday. However, transfers to banks in India are being suspended as well.

Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd, a luxury sports car maker based in Britain has been looking for the Indian market for pushing its growth story. Speaking from Aston Martin's headquarters in Warwickshire, a company spokesperson, confirmed, "We are actively looking at the Indian market."

Ford Motor Company has announced that it will launch sub-B category car 'Figo' in the Indian market by the end of next month.

Nokia, the largest mobile manufacturer in the World, has announced the launch of its one more mobile set in its popular series 40 handset - the Nokia 6303i, which is a successor of the Nokia 6303 classic.

The new phone is introduced with few more additional features and colour versions as compared to the older version.

The renowned social networking site Facebook has redesigned its homepage to celebrate its sixth birthday. Links has been placed on the left of the screen and a top screen menu bar provides access to users to messages, notifications and requests.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), the state owned telecom major, has announced to commence the latest wireless broadband service WiMax, in the NCR this month.

Nasscom has said that the export revenues for the Indian IT-BPO industry are expected to grow 5.5 per cent to around $49.7 billion in the current financial year.

The estimates for software and services exports revenue growth in the next year is around 13-15 per cent and the domestic revenue is expected to expand around 15-17 per cent. Nasscom said that the sector will be a net hirer with over 90,000 jobs added in FY09-10.

Internet giant Google Inc and the National Security Agency are in discussions for a defense agreement to protect Google from cyberattacks, according to a report on the Washington Post.