An Indian cabbie was brutally beaten by two men in Adelaide who allegedly also stole his taxi in a second such incident in the past three weeks.

NEW DELHI: TV viewers fed up with bad signal reception are set to get more choice, with Anil Ambani group company Reliance Communication on Sunday announcing the road map for launching competitively priced Direct-To-Home (DTH) services across 4,000 towns in the next few weeks.
The company has already completed trial runs across 2,400 towns and the service, under the brand name, Big TV DTH. The service is currently available for customers of other DTH operators for just Rs 1,000, compared to nearly Rs 4,000 being charged by existing DTH operators.
The company claims that as of April this year, it had a subscriber base of 40,000. Reliance, however, is offering the service at a monthly price of Rs 325, which includes Rs 100 worth free "pay per view" content, and is hoping to make a dent in the customer base of existing operators with aggressive pricing strategies.
Asked about the commercial launch of services, a spokesperson declined to comment, but said: "The DTH offering under the Big TV brand would be launched during the course of few weeks."

Mukesh Ambani's pay cheque is over Rs 44 cr

NEW DELHI: Top business house Reliance Industries has given its chief Mukesh Ambani, the country's richest person and presumably top-paid executive, a hefty pay hike of about 45 per cent to take his annual remuneration to over USD10 million.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, got a total payout of Rs 44.02 crore in financial year 2007-08, marking an increase of about Rs 13.5 crore from the previous fiscal. In fiscal 2006-07, Ambani's annual remuneration had increased to Rs 30.46 crore, from Rs 24.77 crore previously.
However, a large part of Ambani's full-year pay cheque comes in the form of commissions that the company pays to select executives as a ratio of its net profits.
According to the company's annual report being sent to shareholders, Ambani got a salary of Rs 60 lakh (Rs 5 lakh per month) and another Rs 48 lakh (Rs 4 lakh per month) in the name of "perquisites and allowances".
In addition, he got Rs 18.75 lakh under the head of "retiral benefits" and Rs 4,275.44 lakh toward commission on net profit, taking his total to Rs 4,402.19 lakh for 2007-08. RIL Chief was the top-paid executive in fiscal 2006-07, followed by Madras Cement's Chairman and MD P R R Rajha, who had an annual payout of about Rs 24.8 crore.
However, Ambani, who was ranked as world's fifth richest by Forbes magazine earlier this year with a net worth of USD 43 billion, may not find a place even among the 200 most paid chiefs globally. In a separate list, Forbes named Oracle's CEO Larry Ellision at the top of 500 most paid CEOs in the US with a pay cheque of USD 192.9 million. A total 177 CEOs in the list had a salary of over USD 10 million. It is not yet clear whether Ambani would be highest paid executive in India for 2007-08, as most of the companies are yet to disclose the remuneration figures for that year.

Microsoft proposes alternative deal to Yahoo

SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp said on Sunday it has proposed an alternative deal to Yahoo Inc, rather than a full acquisition, in a move that could save the web pioneer from fighting a proxy battle with financier Carl Icahn. "Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," the company said in a statement without clarifying what that alternative might be.
Microsoft emphasized it was not proposing to make a new bid to buy all of Yahoo, after recently being rebuffed, but could reconsider. Yahoo said in a statement later on Sunday that it continued to consider a number of strategic alternatives and was "open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders".
The company's board will "evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value," Yahoo said in a statement. It added that it had confirmed with Microsoft that it was not interested in "pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo at this time". Analysts were split on the benefits of an alternative scenario to a full-fledged takeover.
"I definitely think an alternative deal is better than a full a acquisition," said Toan Tran, analyst at Morningstar. "It is positive for both companies, because you are getting the benefits of a Yahoo acquisition without the negatives namely the integration risks." But Kim Caughey, a senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, said the market will probably send Yahoo shares higher while pushing down Microsoft shares when the market opens on Monday.
Caughey said a joint venture or minority investment with Yahoo could cause confusion about who was in charge. "Microsoft walking away from Yahoo was a total head fake," said Caughey. "Microsoft is a terrible poker player if it thought people were going to believe that the deal was dead." The New York Times reported that Microsoft and Yahoo may form a partnership or joint venture for search-related advertising to take on Google Inc, which dominates the search market with a share significantly larger than a combined Yahoo and Microsoft. For its part, Yahoo continues to talk with Google Inc about a search advertising partnership and a deal could come as early as this week, a source familiar with the talks said on Thursday.
The statement from Microsoft comes on the heels of a proxy campaign launched on Thursday by Icahn to replace Yahoo's board with directors who would reopen talks with Microsoft, saying Yahoo had acted irrationally in refusing the giant software company's $47.5 billion bid

Microsoft walked away from its pursuit of Yahoo two weeks ago after three months of negotiations when Yahoo's board rejected Microsoft's sweetened offer of $33 a share, saying the company was worth at least $37 a share. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Icahn have not held discussions about Yahoo, said another source close to the company.

A spokesman for Yahoo declined to comment and Icahn could not be reached for comment. In a letter to Icahn last week, Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock said a new board would not be in the best interests of Yahoo investors, adding that Yahoo would consider any deal from any party, including Microsoft, if it offered the company full value. Icahn, who has said he had accumulated 59 million shares and options in Yahoo, also has the support of Paulson & Co, a $30 billion hedge fund that has amassed a 3.4 percent stake in Yahoo, and other investors upset by the board's handling of negotiations with Microsoft. Microsoft had said it had moved on from Yahoo and remained committed to building an online advertising powerhouse to rival Google. Company executives had said in making a case for a Yahoo acquisition that buying the web company would be the fastest way to close the gap on Google.

In an e-mail to employees on Sunday, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platform and services division, said the company must strengthen its online business regardless of how talks with Yahoo turn out. "The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we've been in this position longer than we'd all like," Johnson wrote in the e-mail.

Bilimoria plans Cobra Beer sale

LONDON: Karan Bilimoria, prominent Indian- origin entrepreneur, is considering the sale of his multi-million pound Cobra Beer empire that he began from the back of his car in 1989. According to marketing documents prepared for financial institutions, the company's sale is expected within the next three years.
Cobra Beer has grown into a major company that has a significant market share in the UK as well as in India, in the last 18 months it has struck deals with nine regional brewers and has acquired a majority stake in another.
The documents identify companies: SABMiller, InBev, Molson Coors, Carlsberg and Anheuser-Busch as "obvious buyers" with others such as Heineken, Kirin and Indian-owned companies also "possible buyers".
The Sunday Telegraph today reported that Cobra is trying to secure £13 million from investors to help fund its rapid expansion in India.
Bilimoria said: "It's a very likely option that someone comes along and makes us an offer we cannot refuse. I am not saying I am definitely going to sell the company. What I am saying is that definitely within three years we will have to have a major event."
He pointed SABMiller's acquisition of Foster's Indian operations in 2006 as an indication of the interest that the leading international brewers have in the fast growing Indian market. Cobra is reported to be using investment bank N M Rothschild and City Capital Corporation, an advisory firm, to help it find new investment.
The company's revenue grew 34% last year. This year it expects 44.4 million pounds in sales and is aiming to touch 100 million pounds by 2009. Much of the company's growth is expected to come from India. Cobra sold 4.1 million cases of beer worldwide last year, with 23% of its sales in India. Bilimoria said to the newspaper that his King Cobra strong beer and milder Cobra Premium would double their Indian sales this year.
"As we continue to grow we are becoming more and more valuable, particularly because of growth in India," he said. "We are brewing in nine locations and we now own a brewer.
Our sales in India will have grown by 100% by July. We are growing very rapidly so it's becoming increasingly valuable to a large player in the Indian market or someone wanting to break into India." He added that a trade sale was not the only option open to Cobra. It will also consider a strategic partnership with an international drinks group or a flotation on a stock market, either in London or India.

Anil Ambani to fund Hollywood biggies

CANNES: Bollywood has always gone places. Now it’s going to the very fount of global entertainment — Hollywood — with big money in tow.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Big Entertainment (RBE) has signed deals to provide development funds to eight leading creative forces in Hollywood. The deals, announced here on Sunday, include those with production houses like Nicolas Cage’s Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey’s JC 23 Entertainment, George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions, Chris Columbus’s 1492 Pictures, Tom Hanks’s Playtone Productions, Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Jay Roach’s Everyman Pictures. ( Watch: Anil Ambani signs Hollywood stars )
In layman’s language, this means that the company will provide for the creation of a development silo for each of the Hollywood A-listers. RBE chairman Amit Khanna said: "This initiative will yield up to 30 scripts in the next two years. We are confident that at least 10 of them will go into production during that period." The movies that will be made could initially amount to $1 billion. "There will be no creative interference," said advertising guru Prasoon Joshi, who is also in on the deal. When creative freedom is combined with the huge cache of funds that Reliance will pump in, Bollywood is set to become a very significant player in the west.