An Indian automobile body has remarked that demand for cars in the country is believed to skid more than expectations.

This would be primarily because of rising interest rates and fuel prices “forcing” consumers to tighten budget in the Indian auto market.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Car sales, which grew at a breakneck 30 percent in the fiscal year that ended in April, are now expected to grow by just 10 to 12 percent this fiscal year, down from an earlier forecast of 16 to 18 percent, the industry group forecast.

Car sales in Asia’s third largest economy, which in June saw their slowest pace of growth since March 2009, are driven by a burgeoning middle class that relies on bank loans for purchases.

But the Reserve Bank has raised interest rates ten times since March last year in an effort to battle stubbornly high inflation, a move that has hurt credit-based purchases.

“Policy rates are changing beyond what we had expected three months ago … if there is any further increase, it will have a devastating effect on the industry,” Pawan Goenka, president of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), said on Monday.

“We have seen slowing sales for three months now and with rising interest rates and negative sentiment among buyers, this trend will prevail for another three months,” said Vineet Hetamasaria, auto analyst at PINC Research.

If you have been looking for vehicle and life safety quotations, this compilation of safety quotes would surely be of interest to you.

I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights.  I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I’m gone. -Steven Wright

The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond. -Edward McDonagh

A commuter tie-up consists of you – and people who for some reason won’t use public transit. -Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. -Author Unknown

Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life.  Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts.  Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot.  The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous.  I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common.  It will breed violence on a scale never seen before.  It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home.  It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation.  It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing.  It will make every man a tyrant. -R.A. Lafferty, “Interurban Queen,” 1970, a short story set in the late 1800s  (Thanks, Sam!)

Automobiles are not ferocious…. it is man who is to be feared. -Robbins B. Stoeckel

The $9-billion Cairn-Vedanta deal has been given a conditional approval by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

The CCEA approved most of the recommendations made by the Group of Ministers (GoM) that met for discussing the deal on May 27.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Announcing the decision of CCEA, Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy said, “You are aware that we took the matter to the CCEA on 6th April 2011 which in turn referred the matter to GoM headed by Pranab Mukherjee. The GoM choose to recommend conditional approval and these conditions were 1) royalty should be treated as cost recoverable and 2) the ongoing arbitration case should be withdrawn. The GoM recommended that both these conditions should be enforced. The CCEA has endorsed these recommendations.”

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the clearance of Cairn-Vedanta deal will create positive sentiment in the market.

The government’s approval has come with stringent pre-conditions that include royalty being cost recoverable for the Barmer field in Rajasthan. That means Cairn India will have to pay 20 per cent royalty on Rajasthan crude. Cairn has been in a tussle with ONGC, which owns only 30 per cent stake in the Rajasthan oilfields, but is forced to pay the entire royalty on crude output from this block. ONGC has been objecting to the Cairn-Vedanta deal, saying that its approval is a must for Cairn to sell a controlling stake of its Indian arm to Vedanta.

Cairn India will have to pay Rs. 2,500 per tonne cess on its 70 per cent share in Rajasthan and withdraw the arbitration suit it had filed against cess payment.

Fifty seven Indian companies including Reliance Industries, State Bank of India, and Oil & Natural Gas Corp. figure in the Forbes Global 2000 list of public companies based on their rankings for sales, profits, assets, and market value.

Reliance with sales of $45.3 billion is ranked 121st in the list with three public State Bank of India Group (136, $29.1 billion), Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (172, 22.6 billion) and Indian Oil (243, $52.1 billion) taking the next three places among the Indian firms.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

The Asia-Pacific region led The Global 2000 again this year with 701 companies, including the most additions (11) to the list of the regions – Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa-EMEA, the Americas and the US – with doubled profits, by far the biggest increase.

The biggest profit centre was China, as 121 companies, including PetroChina, ICBC and Sinopec, returned an aggregate profit of $168 billion. Japan and South Korea also showed impressive gains in profits and assets.

With the US economy back on its feet, growing at a steady 3 percent clip over the past 12 months, American firms on The Forbes Global 2000 are growing far faster. Total sales were up 12 percent in 2010 over 2009, and profits continue to rise-up 69 percent, versus 56 percent for the S&P 500.

JPMorgan Chase is in the top spot for the second consecutive year as the largest company of world.

In a bid to cut $3.5 billion in costs and revive flagging profits, the new boss of HSBC will be cutting back in retail banking and may sell its U.S. credit card arm.

Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said the biggest bank of Europe faces an urgent need for action as over two-fifths of its businesses are not delivering their cost of capital.

From news.yahoo.com:

Retreating from high street services in some countries and savings ranging from IT cuts to reducing paperwork would help trim costs as a share of revenue to 48-52 percent by 2013 from 61 percent in the first quarter.

Many banks, including HSBC, have seen this ratio rise sharply, partly through competition for staff in fast-growing Asian markets.

By comparison, rival Standard Chartered’s cost/income ratio was 56 percent last year. But others have done more to keep costs below 50 percent, such as Spain’s Santander, where it was 43 percent last year.

“We clearly have a cost problem,” Gulliver said in a presentation to explain his strategic overhaul on Wednesday.

“We’ve added $3 billion in costs over the last few years with no revenue to show for it,” said the 51-year-old CEO, who took the top job at the start of the year after a damaging boardroom struggle last year.

HSBC shares dipped 0.8 percent to 651 pence at 1150 GMT as investors and analysts were unimpressed by the plan.

The Dublin-based manager of collateralised loan obligations, Avoca Capital, has acquired two high-yield bond hedge funds from UK fund manager Liontrust.

Avoca will be hiring five credit specialists from Liontrust, including fund manager Simon Thorp, as part of the deal.

From Irishtimes.com:

The two funds managed by the Liontrust team have £85 million in assets under management. Avoca will pay 3.75 per cent of the value of the assets to be transferred at the time the deal secures approval. At current values that would be approximately €3.6 million.

The move marks a departure for Avoca, which previously offered “long-only” credit funds. Hedge funds take both long and short positions on investments, meaning they can bet on whether they will rise or fall. A bond hedge fund tries to mitigate the risk of losses by selling, or “shorting”, credit.

“This is our first foray into the hedge fund space, so in that way it’s a new area for us. But we’re still doing what we were always doing, which is investment in sub-investment grade credit,” said Alan Burke, joint chief executive of Avoca.

Avoca has its headquarters in Dublin and the new personnel will be based in the company’s London office.