The Competition Commission has asked the Reserve Bank to 'unshackle' the commercial banks by allowing them operational freedom in functions like branch expansion and opening of new ATMs.

The sole Member of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) Vinod Dhall recently made a presentation to the top brass of the RBI in Mumbai expressing concern over the lack of operational freedom for the banks that is stiffling competition among them.

Drawing a comparison with the insurance sector, which has seen an impressive growth with around 25 new players in short span of time, the CCI said because of excessive regulation only two new banks could open in the last 10 years.

As per the existing norms the banks are required to seek RBI's permission for every small operational matter not to speak of opening new branches, their location and size.

"The banks are required to seek permission even on matters like whether the ATM would be located on the ground floor or the first floor of a building," CCI said in its presentation.

A number of parameters like interest rates on the saving accounts are still regulated by the RBI leaving little scope for competition.

The CCI also raised the issue of 'forcing' mergers on the banks without determining the impact on free competition.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

Dhirubhai Ambani has always been a figure of endless fascination to even those who knew him, but nearly five years after his demise a pictorial biography by his widow Kokilaben attempts to demystify the man who built the Reliance business empire.

Kokilaben has relied on photographs to narrate the life of the late Ambani family patriarch from his birth into a family of limited means at Chorwad in Gujarat in 1932, his early years in Yemen and till his death in 2002.

While his friends knew him as a strict disciplinarian when it came to his sons, the 338-page coffee table book offers rare glimpses of the man as a loving grandfather, who celebrated his nine grandchildren as 'Navratnas' (nine gems).

The book Dhirubhai Ambani-The Man I Knew was released in English and Gujarati on the occasion of Kokilaben's 75th birthday on Saturday, sources said.

The pictorial biography, which comes Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Governor S M Krishna, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, Bihar Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson N K Singh, ICICI Bank Chief K V Kamath, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and veteran Congress leader R K Dhawan were part of the gathering, the sources said.

Dhirubhai, who passed away on July 6, 2002 at the age of 70, left behind a business empire--the Reliance Group--with a turnover of Rs 75,000 crore, though he is said to have started the enterprise with just Rs 15,000.

Though his two sons split the business empire between them in 2005, they have only helped it grow much bigger with the flagship Reliance Industries controlled by Mukesh now becoming the largest Indian company in terms of market capitalisation at close to Rs 2,00,000 crore.

On the other hand, Anil Ambani, who heads the ADA group companies, including telecom major Reliance Communications, is the country's third richest person.

While the book was a pictorial biography, there was no still photography during the event but it was, however, captured on video. years after Hamish McDonald essayed 'The Polyester Prince'-the official biography-also contains rare and unpublished family portraits from the archives of Kokilaben.

The Ambani scions Mukesh and Anil, their sisters Deepti and Nina along with their husbands, and all the nine grandchildren were present on the occasion of the book release.

The grandchildren paid tributes to their grandfather at a small private function, attended by late Dhirubhai's close associates and friends from the group companies, business circle and in public life.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

IBM is not ready to guarantee that its computer programs are compatible with Oracle Corp.'s recently launched version of the Linux operating system, an IBM spokesman said.

This means that if IBM software programs turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Enterprise Linux, then it will be up to Oracle--and not IBM--to resolve the issue, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon.

Oracle, which started selling Linux in October, has said its product is identical to one from Red Hat Inc, the No. 1 vendor of the popular open-source operating system, and will seamlessly run software written for the Red Hat system.

But financial and industry analysts have said that software buyers want outside assurances to back up that claim before they will switch to Oracle.

IBM may one day support Oracle Linux. "We are going to wait and see if there is traction in the marketplace," McMahon said. "If clients want it (Oracle), then we will support it."

IBM guarantees its products will work with Red Hat's version of Linux.

"What Red Hat is selling to the customer is peace of mind. Oracle cannot do that because it is unable to certify comparability," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research.

Red Hat provides such a guarantee in the form of certifications from the makers of some 2,755 business software packages, which say that their products are completely compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined to say if any software makers have certified that their products are compatible with Oracle Enterprise Linux.

She wouldn't say how Oracle would respond if its Linux customers were to have problems using other software programs on the operating system.

Linux is an operating system, or the basic group of software programs that run any computer. Other software that is loaded onto that computer must be compatible with that operating system for it to work properly.

Analysts say the compatibility certifications from other software makers rank among Red Hat's key selling points.

The certifications from IBM are important because it sells widely used programs that companies use to run large computer networks. Those titles include the DB2 database, Tivoli software for managing computer networks and Websphere middleware.

Oracle has declined to say how many customers have purchased its new Linux product since its launch in October, and it has yet to announce any customer wins.

Red Hat said it added more than 12,000 customers in its third fiscal quarter, but it does not disclose its total number of customers.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com