MUMBAI: Parvinder Singh, chairman and managing director of the pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy Laboratories, has been selected for Business India's Businessman of the Year 1998 award. Singh was chosen for the award for transforming Ranbaxy into India's largest and most dynamic pharma company which has a global presence, with manufacturing operations in seven countries. Since 1994, Singh's company has doubled both the topline as well as the bottomline.

The selection of the award was mainly done by an eminent panel chaired by Mukesh Ambani, Vice chairman and managing director and Anil Ambani, managing director Reliance Industries, joint winners of the Business India's Businessmen of the year 1997 award. The other panel members were R Gopala Krishnan, executive director Tat Sons, R Seshasayee managing director Ashok Leyland, Deepak Satwalekar, managing director HDFC, Vikram Lal, member supervisory board, Eicher, Nimesh Kampani, chairman JM financial, Kiran Mazumdar, managingdirector Bicon India and Dipankar Gupta, Principal KPMG Peat Marwick.

Visa launches debit card

MUMBAI: Visa International on Tuesday announced the launch of its electronic debit product, Visa Electron, in the country. Citibank, ANZ Grindlays Bank and HDFC Bank will be among the first to issue Visa Electron cards and will do so in the first half of 1999 while five other banks, including the State Bank of India, will follow suit at a later stage. Local Visa Electron cardholders can access their bank deposits from any of the 5,000 point-of-sale (PoS)/electronic data capture (EDC) terminals and over a 100 ATMs.

Exim Bank issue

MUMBAI: Export-Import Bank of India is privately placing a 10-year 13.5 paper for an amount of Rs 200 crore. The issue -- with put and call options at the end of five and seven years -- carries a greenshoe option for another Rs 200 crore. This is the second private placement in the history of Exim Bank which raised Rs 200 crore in January 1996 through this route. With a13.5% coupon (payabale yearly), the bond offers 0.9% upfront discount to the face value. The yield to maturity (YTM) thus works out to 13.76% annually. The issue -- which has been assigned a triple-A (AAA) rating by Crisil and LAAA rating by Icra -- will open on December 2 and close on December 21. The long-term paper is targeting MFs, banks, FIs and gratuity funds.