Thursday saw an announcement coming from medical service provider Fortis Healthcare that a controlling stake in Mauritian hospital 'Clinique Darne' would be jointly acquired by it with CIEL Group for a total of $7 million.

The domestic firm confirmed, "Fortis, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Novelife Ltd, has joined hands with Mauritian group CIEL for acquiring a controlling stake in the overseas private hospital -- Clinique Darne -- with an investment of $3.5 million each."

The hospital would be rechristened 'Fortis Clinique Darne', once the acquisition process is completed.

The channel business by the Security vendor, Trend Micro is being restructured in India, and already the Delhi-based ACPL and Chennai-based Raksha Technologies have been elevated as sub-distributors.

It has also been learnt that by the end of this month, the consumers will also be able to avail security offerings from the vendors, who are also betting on retail strategy. It will also be good to know that all the retail outlets across the country will have Trend Micro Internet Security and Security Pro.

Vijay Mallaya owned United Spirits Ltd (USL) is all set to strike a strategic deal with Diageo, producer of leading brands Johnnie Walker whiskies and Smirnoff Vodka, in days to come, paving a way for representation in USL board by Diageo.

Diageo may pick up a minority stake of 14.9% in Mallya's United Spirits (USL) that controls about 55% of the spirits market in India. USL group that owns large reserves of treasury stocks may offload these stock reserves in order to arrange funds for its growing capital needs.

With the aim to attract more customers, Western Digital has made announcement regarding its novel drive. The new product has a 2 Terabyte Caviar Green hard drive with
32 MB of cache.

The seek time for the drive is 8.9ms. Apparently, it operates between 7200 or 5400 RPM depending upon the load, which saves power.

RPG Enterprises owned CEAT tyres laid the foundation stone of a radial tyre plant worth Rs 700 crore at Halol, near Baroda in Gujarat. The company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding in this regard at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit (VGGIS) in Ahmedabad on January 13.

The chairman of RPG Enterprises Group, Harsha Goenka said that the first phase of plant would be operational by May 2010. The state of Gujarat is also celebrating its foundation day on the same day.

Kesoram Industries has announced that the company will close production of tyres at its Balasore, Orissa facility to reduce expenditure and cut costs amid tight financial conditions.

B K Birla flagship Kesoram Industries is a leading manufacturer of yarn, tyres and cement and facing low demand from domestic and international market. The ongoing slowdown and liquidity problem are the major reasons cited by the company to halt production at its Orissa facility.