Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), India's largest maker of utility vehicles and tractors, opened its extended automobile manufacturing facility at Zaheerabad in Telangana on Wednesday.

The facility, which was expanded with an investment of Rs 250 crore, comes with an enhanced production capacity of 92,000 vehicles a year, while the overall plant capacity will be 140,000 units per year.

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, India's largest maker of sport-utility vehicles, is in the final stages of negotiations to buy Italian auto-design firm Pininfarina SpA, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mahindra may reach an agreement to purchase the company that has designed some of the most iconic Ferrari sports cars as early as next week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because discussions are private. Representatives for Mahindra and Pininfarina declined to comment.

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd has stopped selling pick-up trucks and sports utility vehicles in Brazil, seven years after it entered the market, due to factors including changes in local regulations, an executive said.

India’s top utility vehicle maker will continue to service customers in Brazil through its local partner and will also still sell tractors in the country, Pravin Shah, CEO of the group’s automotive division and international operations, told Reuters.

Automaker Mahindra & Mahindra today reported a 12.44% decline in total sales at 45,212 units in March.

It had sold 51,636 units in the same month last year, the company said in a statement today.

Mahindra World City, an integrated city set up jointly by the Mahindra Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco) near Chennai, expects to attract Rs 500-600 crore investment in the next two years.

Exports from the City is expected to reach around Rs 10,000 crore by 2017-18.

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services — one of the strongest contenders for a banking licence last year, which later on pulled out of the race — is now eyeing a universal bank licence, whose final guidelines are expected to be announced shortly.

“Our level of interest in a universal bank licence continues, except for the fact that we would like to review the regulatory framework under which the licences are being offered, so that it looks commercially viable and it is becomes administratively doable,” said Ramesh Iyer, managing director of the non-banking financial company (NBFC).

Slowing sales of Mahindra & Mahindra for its key product categories of utility vehicles and tractors is expected to continue over the near term due to a slowing rural economy and lack of new products.

While sales volumes for tractors was down 24% year on year in the December quarter, the company sales in the UV segment were 11% lower.

CHENNAI: As part of its push into the defence sector, the $17 billion SUV-to-software conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra is in talks with British Aerospace for an alliance. Although the talks are on, "nothing has been concluded" yet, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. M&M earlier had an alliance with British Aerospace but bought out its partner's 26% stake in their joint venture Defence Land Systems India (DLSI) in 2013.

Sources also say Mahindra is "not bidding" for a stake in Pipavav Defence & Offshore Engineering Co Ltd.

A large number of listed firms, including top blue-chips, are facing heat of the stock market authorities for sudden surge in their share prices and trading volumes as also for ‘speculative’ information leaks leaving investors at large in the lurch.

In just about one and a half months since the beginning of this year, the stock exchanges have sought ‘clarifications’ from at least 19 Sensex blue chips including giants like Mahindra and Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, SBI, Coal India, Wipro, Hero Motocorp, ICICI Bank, Cipla and L&T.

Helped by a gain from offloading control of a subsidiary company, utility and tractor vehicle market leader Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) on Friday posted a one per cent growth in its net profit for the quarter ended December.

The stand-alone net profit for the quarter stood at Rs 942 crore against Rs 934 crore posted in the same quarter last year. However, nearly Rs 300 crore, which was part of the exceptional item list, arose from the shares in Tech Mahindra that M&M received as a result of the merger of Mahindra Engineering Services, a subsidiary of M&M, with the information technology (IT) company.

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