NEW DELHI: The Tata Group has virtually ruled out re-acquiring Air India when the government decides to divest in it.

"That was 14 years ago (when Tatas were keen on buying back AI.) Not now," Tata Sons-Singapore Airlines (SIA) JV Vistara chairman Prasad Menon told TOI.

Shares of information technologies (IT) companies were trading firm on the bourses, gaining upto 4% each, on the back of positive corporate announcements and weakening rupee.

HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Persistent Systems and Cyient rose 3%-4% each, while Infosys, Wipro, Hexaware Technologies, Polaris Consulting & Services and MindTree gained 1%-2% each on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

At a time when competitors such as Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant have been aggressive with inorganic growth (mergers and acquisitions), India’s largest information technology (IT) services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), prefers to grow organically.

Rajesh Gopinathan, chief financial officer at TCS, had told the Business Standard in an earlier interview: “We are always open to large investments and we have the capacity to do it. We believe the opportunity for organic growth is so large that an acquisition-led growth strategy is not something that we are very keen on.”

MUMBAI: Debashis Poddar may have a busy two years ahead. The global head of mergers and acquisitions at Tata Consultancy ServicesBSE -0.23 % is expected to help boost the company's appetite for M&A deals when its rivals are dipping deep into their wallets to buy growth.

TCS, the country's largest software services company, has always been a conservative player in the M&A space, a trait it used to share with others in the IT industry. However, over the past few months, Infosys and Cognizant Technology Solutions have become more aggressive in buying companies, while Wipro is boosting investments in startups.

Tata Consultancy Services, the IT arm of the Tata Group, has been ranked fifty-seventh in valuation firm Brand Finance's latest list of the top 500 brands in the US. TCS's brand value has jumped nearly four times in the last five years to touch $8.7 billion now, Brand Finance said. In 2010, TCS's brand value was $2.3 billion, it said.

Interestingly tech companies have made it to the top three spots in the list. Apple is number one, followed by Google and Microsoft.

Between Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys, the three bigwigs of the Indian IT space, it seems that that employees are jumping the ship at a rate faster than ever.

The annual attrition rate at Infosys stood at 18.9%, Wipro average at around 15% and TCS shed nearly 48,000 employees last year, averaging at 14.9% in the last quarter of fiscal year 2015.

Vishal Sikka-led Infosys is expected to see a 60-70-basis-point (bps) decline in its operating profit margin as it closes the fourth quarter of FY15 hit by cross-currency movements. At the same time, speculation is mounting that the IT major is close to announcing another acquisition in the digital domain.

Infosys, which will announce its results on Friday in Chennai, is not expected to buck the trend, as witnessed in the quarterly performances of TCS and Wipro, which recorded flattish revenue growth and tepid profits.

Mutual fund houses offloaded shares of pharmaceutical major Lupin Ltd, information technology (IT) giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Motilal Oswal Financial Services over the last two months.

While fund managers reduced their cash holdings and went on a buying spree over the last two months, they avoided these stocks.

The country's largest information technology (IT) services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), believes the huge cash payout in FY15 will not affect its cash flow or its ability to invest in growth areas. The company also said that the idea behind the bonus payout was to allow the 250,000 employees to use it the way they want to.

Rajesh Gopinathan, chief financial officer, said that even after the payout of Rs 2,628 crore as employee bonus, the company is left with an additional cash reserve of Rs 1,000 crore.

The top ten stock picks of India's equity mutual fund managers underwent a sharp re-shuffle in 2014-15. MF managers not only changed their preferences for stocks but also ousted three heavyweight counters from their top holdings during the year, reducing concentration of equity assets in these stocks by around 440 basis points.

Sectoral giants - FMCG major ITC, largest software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and oil explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) - were all out from the top picks.

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