According to Business Standard's Wednesday report, expansion is on the cards for HMSI - Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India. The 100 per cent subsidiary of the Japanese Honda Motor Corporation, the HMSI intends spending Rs 300 crore in the next three-year period.

Citing the rather poor performance of the Indian heavy truck segment, the Hero Group has decided to pull out of its joint venture with Daimler! With the Hero Group quitting the collaboration for making commercial vehicles in India, Daimler will buy back Hero's 40 percent stake - worth 16 million euros - in Daimler Hero Motor Corporation (DHMC).

While Daimler says the Hero Group back-out was due to financial constraints, the Chairman of Hero Corporate Services, Sunil Kant Munjal, cited plunging commercial vehicle sales in India - which dropped 22 percent in FY 2009 - as the reason.

As per estimations by one of its lenders in February 2009, Ranbaxy Laboratories may be sitting on mark-to-market (MTM) losses of more than Rs 25 billion on foreign currency derivatives transactions signed up with a range of banking institutions.

With this lender alone, Ranbaxy is suffering an MTM loss of Rs 6 billion on the derivatives contracts that it signed during April-May 2008.

But, Ranbaxy is not the only company that has been hit by forex derivatives losses. The losses have seen across the segments.

The Hyderabad based, Natco Pharma, on Wednesday, announced that it has signed up a deal with pharmaceutical major Dr Reddy's Laboratories.

Under the deal, both the firms will develop, manufacture and sell generic cancer products jointly.

However, the financial details of the deal are not yet known.

With the help of funds from its internal accretions and the foreign exchange proceeds, Reliance Communications intends buying back foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) at a mark down, depending upon the central bank approval.

A tender offer, for repurchasing the bonds for cash at a discount, has been issued by the company to all its bond holders.

Pantaloon Retail India, a Future Group Company promoted by Kishore Biyani, has decided to issue 1.1-crore equity shares to promoters and associates and 41-lakh equity shares to Dharmyug Investments at a price of Rs.183 per share on preferential basis.

Apart from this, the Mumbai based company would also issue 50-lakh warrants at a price of Rs.183 per warrant to promoters and their associates, convertible into equity shares within 18 months of allotment on preferential basis.