Bangalore/Mumbai: Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd has changed the chief executive of Mahindra Retail Pvt. Ltd, which runs the Mom and Me and Beanstalk chain stores, after the kids wear retailer went on an expansion spree for several years that led to hundreds of crore in losses.

Mahindra has brought in Prakash Wakankar from its private equity arm Mahindra Partners to replace K. Venkataraman as CEO at Mahindra Retail. Wakankar is a former CEO of the Indian business of confectionery maker Perfetti Van Melle and also headed Mahindra Holidays and Resorts in a brief stint more than a decade ago.

German car maker Daimler AG's luxury brand division Mercedes-Benz has been found guilty of manipulating prices for after-sales services in China, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing authorities in Jiangsu province.

An array of industries, from milk powder makers to tech firms, have been coming under the spotlight in recent years as China intensifies its efforts to bring companies into compliance with a 2008 anti-monopoly law.

Even as the big boys of Indian e-commerce splurge on “reaching out to consumers”, spending crores on marketing and advertising, the e-tailers unanimously agree on technology being the backbone of their business. Be it hiring professionals at a premium or driving innovation through in-house technologies, the virtual platforms can not do without constant improvisation in technology.

Reiterating its bullishness on the domestic equities, Swiss brokerage UBS has said NSE Nifty will scale the 8,000-mark by December even though market expectations from government remain "unrealistically" high.

"The market direction is likely to remain positive going forward. We believe investors will be willing to give a premium for growth potential, especially as cyclical economic recovery starts manifesting in data points...therefore we maintain our Nifty target for end-2014 at 8000," UBS analyst Gautam Chhaochharia said in a note.

The benchmark BSE Sensex fell over 14 points in early trade today as funds and retail investors booked profits after four sessions of gains amid a mixed trend in other Asian markets.

The 30-share barometer, which had gained 774.09 points in the previous four sessions, shed 14.47 points, or 0.06 per cent, to 26,088.76, led by weakness in FMCG, IT, realty and tech sector stocks.

Tata Motors has rallied 2% to Rs 495, also its record high on BSE, extending its rally on the bourses.

In past one week, the stock surged 14% from Rs 433 on August 8, after reporting a robust earnings for the quarter ended June 2014 on back of strong sales of luxury Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR). The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex gain 3.3% during the same period.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)-Mittal Energy Ltd, the joint venture of ONGC and steel czar Lakshmi Mittal, has relinquished an oil block in Nigeria after the African nation refused to relieve it of a $6-billion downstream investment commitment.

OMEL — a joint venture of ONGC Videsh and Mittal Investment Sarl — had in 2005 won the right to explore for oil and gas in offshore OPL-279 and OPL-285 blocks after committing to invest $6 billion in an 180,000 barrels per day greenfield refinery, a 2,000 Mw power plant or a railway line from east to West of Nigeria.

Telecom operator Reliance Communications plans to cut down expansion cost and hive off some assets in its bid to reduce debt by about 37 per cent, to Rs 25,500 crore in the next 12 months.

The Anil Ambani-led company plans to use the key infrastructure - mobile towers and optical fibre - of his elder brother Mukesh Ambani's company Reliance Jio Infocomm for future expansion rather making its own fresh investments.

After months of negotiations and intermittent unrest impacting production, Pune-based Bajaj Auto and its Chakan plant (in Pune) unions have finally reached a wage agreement under which the management has agreed to increase the wages by up to Rs 10,000 per month.

According to the revised wage agreement, permanent employees having been with the company for five or more years will get a wage hike of Rs 10,000 a month while those having spent three years or more will be given Rs 9,500 a month.

The government has asked market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to allow relaxations in rules for follow-on public offerings (FPOs), two people with knowledge of the development have said.

For the 2014-15 disinvestment programme, the Centre intends to give more weight to the FPO route than the offer-for-sale (OFS) route, to ensure better participation from retail investors.

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