1. business and industrial
2. energy
3. oil

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2014
BUSINESS
Kalyan Jewellers invests
KD7 million in Kuwait
Three signature showrooms to open on Friday l Mega Prize of KD75,000 for single winner
Amitabh Bachchan, the Brand Ambassador of
Kalyan Jewellers
KUWAIT: Kalyan Jewellers, one of India’s most-trusted jewellery brands, has announced its foray into Kuwait with an
investment of more than KD7 million. Kalyan Jewellers has
offered a special consumer scheme to mark the launch.
Consumers will be given a free gold coin on purchase of jewellery worth KD150 and will be eligible to participate in a lucky
draw and win the mega prize of KD75,000.
Amitabh Bachchan, the stalwart of Indian cinema and the
Brand Ambassador of Kalyan Jewellers, who is on his first visit
to Kuwait, will inaugurate the outlets on Friday (December 26,
2014) along with the other ambassadors Manju Warrier
(Malayalam film actor), Nagarjuna Akkineni (Telegu film actor)
and Prabhu Ganesan (Tamil film actor). The Chairman of the
Group T S Kalyanaraman, the Executive Directors Rajesh
Kalyanaraman and Ramesh Kalyanaraman will also be present
for the inauguration. During the inauguration of the showrooms, the celebrities will jointly address the public from a specially erected stage. The timings for inauguration are as follows:
December 26 :
Al-Rai 11.15 am - 11.45am, Malia, Kuwait City) 2.45 pm 3.05 pm and Fahaheel 3.45 pm - 4.15 pm.
T S Kalyanaraman, Chairman and Managing Director,
Telugu film actor Nagarjuna Akkineni
Tamil film actor Prabhu Ganesan
Malayalam film actress Manju Warrier
Kalyan Jewellers said, “The expansion in Kuwait is part of
our growth strategy to consolidate our presence in GCC
countries. The launch of three Kalyan stores in one day in
Kuwait is a reiteration of our commitment to provide the
best jewellery buying experience for connoisseurs of jewellery in Kuwait. The investment of KD7 million has been
made to ensure that we can reach out to more customers
through these three outlets. Our stores will offer an exquisite collection of contemporary and traditional designs
that will fulfill distinct needs of the evolved Kuwait consumer.”
Jewellers will have 77 outlets spread across West Asia and
India including nine in the UAE. It will also add Qatar to its
presence shortly. By the end of fiscal 2015, Kalyan Jewellers is
targeting 100 showrooms.
Kalyan Jewellers recently attracted a significant investment of $200 million from leading private equity investor
Warburg Pincus. The investment is set to accelerate the
growth plans of Kalyan Jewellers as it consolidates its leading
position in the existing markets and enters global markets
including Singapore and Malaysia. Since the investment from
Warburg Pincus, Kalyan Jewellers has added over 15 showrooms to its network.
Kalyan Jewellers is one of the most trusted brands in India
and has developed a deep connect among its stakeholders
with its brand promise of ‘Trust is Everything’. Kalyan
Jewellers has developed a distinct image among consumers
by smartly leveraging its brand ambassadors. Kalyan was the
first jewellery brand in the country to have a male as a brand
ambassador, successfully defying the convention in jewellery
marketing.
Kalyan Jewellers has also invested in educational campaigns for consumers to share their insights on buying jewellery. Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are
the brand ambassadors of Kalyan Jewellers. The brand also
has regional icons like Prabhu Ganesan, Nagarjuna, Shivaraj
Kumar and Manju Warrier associated with the brand. Kalyan
Jewellers has been ranked among Top 10 Trend Setting
Brands in India (Pitch, 2013).
Target
With the three showrooms opening in Kuwait, Kalyan
Oil price fall puts squeeze on
North Sea energy minnows
LONDON: Plunging oil prices have
increased the strain on the many small
energy firms operating in the North Sea
who were already facing diminishing
returns from an area that once helped power the British economy. With fields more
mature and oil harder to find, heavyweights such as BP and Shell turned their
attention elsewhere long ago, leaving
smaller independent firms to explore the
more remote areas.
As many as 133 companies are now active
in the British part of the North Sea. However,
a third of those companies are deemed by
experts to be too small to finance big ticket
projects and a fall of around 45 percent in oil
prices since June has lessened the sector’s
appeal to big investors.
Efforts to find new oil and gas fields
have slumped to the lowest level since
exploration started in the 1970s because of
reduced investment. That has sharply cut
the amount of revenue the government
can expect to take from the sector in taxation. “Nothing less than radical change will
prevent the premature demise of the basin,
let alone maximize economic recovery,”
said Dave Blackwood, former head of BP’s
North Sea business, adding his voice to
industry calls for tax cuts.
Britain’s finance ministry has said it is
working on a reform of its oil and gas tax
policy but its drive to reduce the budget
deficit will limit its ability to cut rates. An
election next May only adds to the political
uncertainty. British oil companies pay a
supplementary levy on top of production
income tax, which will drop by 2 percentage points to 30 percent on Jan. 1. The oil
industry is crying out for steeper cuts to
help dampen the impact of surging costs.
“You’ve got to get the tax change right.
If you put it up too much, and arguably
that has happened, then it strangles activity,” Mark Routh, chief executive at small
North Sea player Independent Oil and Gas,
told Reuters.
Receipts fall
During the early 1980s, annual tax
receipts to Margaret Thatcher’s govern-
ment peaked at 12 billion pounds ($18.8
billion) when booming North Sea oil output coincided with high oil prices, four
times the 3 billion pounds predicted for
2014. Promised oil revenues were in part
used to justify Scotland’s independence
movement which banked on oil to underwrite a historic break for the rest of Britain,
thwarted in a referendum in September.
Instead, Brent crude prices fell as low as
$58.5 a barrel last week and the major oil
firms are shifting their focus to more promising new areas in south-east Asia, Africa
and shale oil plays in North America. While
Britain’s growing pool of small-scale firms,
such as Parkmead, Hurricane Energy and
Infrastrata , can be more nimble when it
comes to adopting new technologies,
many of the areas remaining to be
explored are remote and therefore costly.
“If they don’t have the money they can’t
fund activity,” said Brian Nottage, general
manager at oil and gas advisory Hannon
Westwood. An example is Atlantic
Petroleum, which produces oil in the UK
North Sea and has cut its exploration
spending for 2015 by 75 percent, arguing it
needed to save cash to fund its operating
fields in the current oil price environment.
An increasing number of firms looking
to enter new fields are now offering “farmouts”, allowing investors including rival
companies, to take a stake in the new project.
“(But) not that many are successful,
hence the problem that we see in exploration activity,” Nottage said. Of the 133
companies in the UK North Sea, more than
a third have not developed reserves in the
basin, meaning they cannot bank on any
revenue from production in the short term.
In the longer term, the large number of
small-scale players accessing the North Sea
exploration market could lead to merger
activity to create more robust businesses.
“The UK North Sea is definitely at an inflection point. That inflection point will either
send it down or have the potential to make
sure it remains as a basin for another 10-15
years,” said Alison Baker, head of PwC’s UK
oil and gas practice. —Reuters
Russia’s new grain export
duty sows confusion
MOSCOW: Russia stiffened its bid to curb grain
exports yesterday with plans for a duty on shipments, to defend domestic bread supply
against a crumbling ruble.
Russia, one of the world’s top wheat
exporters to North Africa and the Middle East,
has been exporting record volumes of grain this
year as the ruble fall attracted buyers. It brought
in a large grain crop of 104 million tons but after
the surge in exports Moscow needed to hang
on to its remaining stocks, Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev told a meeting with officials.
“(We will) prepare a proposal for a decision
on export duty. It will be done within 24 hours,”
Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told
the meeting. Medvedev told Dvorkovich to submit the proposal for his signature. Turkey and
Egypt are the largest buyers of Russian wheat.
Neither man said when, at what level or for
which type of grains the duty was to be
imposed. Russia used a protective duty on
wheat exports in 2008. Officials are discussing a
prohibitive duty and may impose it earlier than
exporters are able to fulfil already-signed contracts, an industry source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
Dmitry Rylko, the head of IKAR consultancy,
said he expected the duty to be at a prohibitive
level. Traders have forward contracts for Russian
grain until April. Last week, Russia cut railway
loadings of grain for export, industry sources
said. State-controlled Russian Railways, which
has a monopoly on rail shipment, declined to
comment. —Reuters
Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier (left) and Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker pose with a replica of an Airbus A350 during a ceremony
in Toulouse, southwestern France, yesterday. —AP
Airbus delivers a350-900
plane to Qatar Airways
TOULOUSE, France: Airbus delivered its first next-generation A350900 plane to Qatar Airways yesterday in a formal ceremony that
kickstarts its bid to erode rival
Boeing’s dominance in the lucrative long-haul market. The Dohabased company, owned by the
energy-rich Gulf state, has ordered
80 of the planes, making it not
only the launch customer but also
the largest single customer of the
fuel-efficient A350 so far.
Qatar Airways’s first A350 had
been due to be delivered on
December 13 in the southwestern
French city of Toulouse where
Airbus is based, but the airline
postponed the handover at the
last moment, citing equipment in
the cabin that did not correspond
to its requirements. “My dear
Akbar, you are a demanding customer, particularly demanding and
sometimes even a little too
demanding, but you are also one
of the architects of the A350,”
Airbus chief Fabrice Bregier told
Qatar Airways head Akbar Al-Baker
at the ceremony.
“We owe you a lot for this program.”
Fuel savings crucial
Airlines are in a major push to
modernize their fleets to reap the
energy savings that the latest generation of planes offer, especially as
competition in the sector is fierce
But Airbus hopes to catch up with
its A350, whose wings and fuselage
are made of carbon fibre and which
will save up to 25 percent in fuel consumption. Airbus invested 10-12 billion euros ($12-$15 billion) in its strat-
TOULOUSE: A Qatar Airways A350 takes off from the Airbus
headquarters in Toulouse yesterday. —AFP
and fuel is one of biggest costs. For
the moment, Boeing dominates the
lucrative market for long-haul, midsized planes with its B777 and nextgeneration 787 Dreamliner outweighing the European firm’s A330.
egy to position the A350 between
the popular B777 and the
Dreamliner, hoping to eat away at
both planes’ markets.
So far, the plane has been a success with 778 orders already regis-
tered by the end of November.
Boeing, meanwhile, has accumulated
1,055 orders for the Dreamliner,
which was launched several years
ago. The first commercial flight of
Qatar Airways’s brand new plane will
take place on January 15 on the
Doha to Frankfurt route, and the second A350-900 should come into
operation in February.
The airline is one of a trio of fastgrowing Gulf carriers seeking to further muscle into European markets,
as energy-rich states in the region
seek to develop new sources of
income to reduce their dependence
on oil.
Baker has described the delivery
of the A350 as the “second significant
fleet milestone” for the carrier after
recently receiving three of 14 A380
superjumbo planes bought from
Airbus.
The airline has also purchased
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. The A350
program was launched in 2007, and
the first test flight for the plane took
place in June last year. Bregier told
reporters in Toulouse that Airbus
planned to ramp up production of its
newest plane from two to 10 aircraft
a month within four years. —AFP