Asian markets trade higher; Hang Seng up 297 points

At 10 hours IST, Asian markets were trading higher. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was trading at 20,831.65, up 296.80 points or 1.45% and Japan's Nikkei 225 Average rose 125.94 points or 1.41% to 9,081.14.

Straits Times went up just 1.88 points to 2,887.14 and Seoul Composite shot up 36.97 points or 1.97% to 1,917.08.

Taiwan Weighted rallied 65.14 points or 0.84% to 7,806.50. However, China's Shanghai Composite was trading at 2,562.52, down 4.82 points.

Dow Jones ends higher on Wed, loses 530 pts in Aug

The US equity markets closed with moderate gains amid volatile session on Wednesday. The market continued its uptrend for the fourth consecutive session.

On August 31st, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 53.58 points or 0.46%, to close at 11,613.53. The Nasdaq Composite went up 3.35 points or 0.13%, to end at 2,579.46 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 5.97 points or 0.49%, to close at 1,218.89.

Shares of aluminum producer Alcoa rose 3.6%, to USD 12.80. However, AT&T fell 3.9% to USD 28.48 on reports that US government may block company's deal with T-Mobile.

Verizon Communications lost 0.4% to USD 36.17. Sprint Nextel Corp jumped 5.9% to USD 3.76.

For the August, Dow Jones shed 529.71 points or 4.36%, biggest monthly fall since May 2010. The S&P 500 Index lost 5.7% and Nasdaq fell 6.4%.

Maruti Suzuki begins some operations at Manesar plant

Maruti Suzuki has re-started some operations at its Manesar plant, the India’s top passenger car maker said Tuesday. The operations are focused in high automation areas of the plant, it said.

Production at Maruti’s plant in Manesar, Haryana came to a halt on Monday after the company suspended 21 employees on charges of sabotaging operations and deliberately causing quality problems in the vehicles manufactured at the plant. It had further suspended 16 more workers on Tuesday.

Maruti is now tapping new trained people from technical institutes who it aims to employ in the next couple of days to ramp up production.

"In the last 30 hours since production came to a halt, the company’s managers and engineers have been scouting for experienced and ITI trained manpower in the Manesar belt. By the end of the day today, they had identified over 200 people and expressed confidence that production would be ramped up in the next few days. These 200 people are likely to join in the next 2-3 days on a contract basis," Maruti said.

Maruti had asked all its workers at the plant to sign a Good Conduct bond, seeking an assurance that they will not indulge in activities that would hamper normal production.

It said 11 more workers signed the bond today, taking the total to 36 workers. 25 workers had signed the good conduct bond on Monday.

ONGC FPO likely to hit markets on September 20

Follow-on public offer of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is likely to hit markets on September 20, reports CNBC-TV18 quoting NewsWire 18.

The company's FPO road shows are likely to begin on September 5 while it is likely to file FPO documents with SEBI by September 8.

The stock fell 1.1%, to close at Rs 274.95 a share on BSE. Market capitalisation of the company stood at Rs 235,233.20 crore. 
 
The FPO has been deferred several times in the past due to the company not having adequate number of independent directors on its board. The FPO was then planned for July 5 but was again deferred.

Maruti may partly resume Manesar plant operations today

Maruti Suzuki is likely to resume some operations at its Manesar plant in Haryana on Tuesday and may even employ temporary contract workers at the plant, according to RC Bhargava, chairman of India’s top passenger car maker.

The company is facing fresh labour unrest at the Manesar plant. Maruti has suspended nearly two-dozen workers at Manesar and has alleged deliberate tampering with components by some workers.

The company has suspended 16 more permanent workers and discontinued the services of 12 trainees today according to PTI, further intensifying the stand-off between management and workers, and completely affecting production for the second day.

The company is asking all its workers to sign a Good Conduct bond, seeking an assurance that they will not indulge in activities that would hamper normal production at the plant. It has already lost around 1,200 units of production and Rs 40 crore in revenue due to the halt in production.

Earlier in June, a 13-day strike by Manesar workers who were demanding recognition to a new labour union, had also crippled production.

Bhargava told CNBC-TV18 today that there had been no final solution yet and the Manesar issue would take time to settle down. However, he was hopeful that the matter would not take too long to resolve itself.

Automobile companies, including Maruti Suzuki, have seen a sharp drop in sales growth this year due to expensive loans and high fuel prices. This fresh unrest at Manesar, which produces the new Swift among other cars, could hurt Maruti further.

Vehicle sales, which rose over 30% in 2010-11 (April-March) are only expected to rise around 11-13% according to Society of Indian Auto Manufacturers. Bhargava, however, feels the industry is only likely to manage about 8% growth in the current fiscal year.

He said sales in August are unlikely to be any better than in July, but is hopeful that there will be some pick up in the festive season. Bhargava also doesn’t expect the issues at Manesar will have any effect on Maruti’s market share.

Maruti Suzuki shares fell over 1.5% on opening on Tuesday but have since recovered the losses to trade up 0.1% at Rs 1,080.70 on NSE in late morning trade.