The Hindu Business Line : Chairman? So?

The chairman of a leading Chennai-based auto component company was invited to apply for a credit card by a leading and very aggressive private bank. Everything asked for was provided, including bank statements showing a respectable balance and his PAN number. Then having wooed him, the bank turned down his application. Sorry, said the bank, we cannot offer a card to those above 60 years. Is it any wonder, then, that the bank is losing customers?

ONGC’s gaffe

Most big companies mail in-house magazines to journos which are consigned to the dustbin promptly. Not surprising, really, considering the hottest stories are usually about the MD’s adenoids. Sometimes they have stories on the exploits of their sportsmen employees. So ONGC, which employs cricketer Gautam Gambhir, had this to say: Gautam does India proud, receives a pat from CMD. It contained nice words about Gambhir for his “splendid performance against the Aus sies” and how “this wonder boy” had made the company proud by “devastating Aussies (sic) will power and defense by driving on either side of the wicket”. All fine, except Gambhir’s latest heroics have been against the Kiwis, not the Aussies.

Your problem, mate

Election time is probably the best time for bureaucrats to give it back to their ministers. It seems a particular minister wanted a large tender that would have benefited his State to be awarded before the model code of conduct set in. One of his staff ‘requested’ a top official to ensure that the project was awarded “as per the minister’s wishes”. The bureaucrat, who had an axe to grind it seems, politely replied, “We don’t have t o fight elections.” The project did not take off.

Right on, Mr Obama

Times, as they say, are a changing. Barack Obama in his press conference in London after the G-20 meet had this to say, “…it is important for the United States to lead by example in reducing our carbon footprint so that we can help to forge agreements with countries like China and India that, on a per capita basis, have a much smaller footprint and so justifiably chafe at the idea that they should have to sacrifice their development for our efforts to control climate change; but also acknowledging that if China and India, with their populations, had the same energy usage as the average American, then we would have all melted by now…”About emerging markets, Mr Obama had this to say: “…the G-20 is tripling the IMF’s lending capacity and promoting lending by multilateral development banks to increase the purchasing power and expand markets in every country.”

Tailpiece

It’s all about the auspicious time. The valves for D-6 gas were opened at 5 pm last Wednesday so that it could reach landfall at midnight, the time pronounced as being auspicious by the astrologer. Now we know why Reliance is successful.

OUR DELHI BUREAU

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The slump is showing

‘An olde English tea party’

G-20: Just glamour and glitter

China proposes to dethrone the dollar

Gambles without gameplan

Chairman? So?

‘We need to think about a financial stability unit in the RBI’

All that glitters…