25th March 2005: Vivro Financial Services Pvt Ltd ("Manager to the Offer") on behalf of M/s Surbhi Capital & Finance Pvt Ltd, M/s Lakhani Marketing Pvt Ltd, Mr. Manindersingh S Jolly and Mr. Ashok P Jain who are acting in concert with each other for the purpose of this open offer ("Acquirers") and to the fully paid equity shares of Tripex Overseas Ltd ("Target Company"), pursuant to provisions of Regulations 10, 11(1) and 12 and in compliance with the Securities & Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) regulation, 1997 ("Regulations") and subsequent amendments thereto has announced as below:

The Offer:

The Acquirers are making Open Offer in terms of the Securities & Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeover) Regulations, 1997 to the fully paid equity shareholders of the Target Company to acquire 10,20,000 equity shares representing 20% of the total equity shares capital of the Company and 20.02% of the total voting capital of the Target Company at a price of Rs 10/- per equity shares payable in cash ("Offer price"). The individual Acquirers shall acquire such shares in the following numbers:

Surbhi Capital & Finance Pvt Ltd: 3,06,000 no of shares of Target Company

Lakhani Marketing Pvt Ltd: 3,06,000 no of shares of Target Company

Mr. Manindersingh S Jolly: 2,04,000 no of shares of Target Company

Mr. Ashok P Jain: 2,04,000 no of shares of Target Company

Schedule of Activities

Specified Date: March 31, 2005

Date of Opening of the Offer: May 18, 2005

Date of Closing of the Offer: June 07, 2005

23rd March 2005: Centurion Bank has raised $70 million through an issue of 1,45,83,300 global depositary receipts (GDRs) priced at $4.8 each. According to a release issued by the bank to the BSE today, each GDR represents 15 equity shares of Re 1 each. "The GDRs will be listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange," the release added. The funds will be used to enhance the bank's capital adequacy ratio and increase lending, the release said. "Citigroup acted as the sole book runner and lead manager to the GDR offering. The bank has given a greenshoe option to the book runner for up to $10 million," the release said.

22nd March 2005: The government will come out with a comprehensive white paper (status report) on disinvestment in public sector undertakings (PSUs) during the monsoon session of the Parliament, minister of state for finance S S Palanimanickam said today. "The focus of the disinvestment policy has changed from the earlier one, emphasising strategic sale, to a broad-based strategy encompassing the disinvestment of minority shareholding in profitable PSUs while retaining at least 51% shareholding and full management control with the government," he said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today. The new policy also prescribes restructuring and modernisation of loss making but revivable PSUs, including the induction of a private investor and closure or sale of chronically sick PSUs after ensuring that the dues of the employees along with compensation are settled, the minister said.

21st March 2005: UTI Bank has raised a total $239.30 million through its Global Depositary Receipts issue, which was on Monday admitted for trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). UTI Bank raised over Rs 1,000 crore by listing 40.49 million GDRs at the main market of LSE, with each GDR representing one underlying share. UTI Bank is the first Indian company to list on LSE this year. Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, who acted as book-runners and joint lead managers for the offering, advised it.

18th March 2005: Microsoft Corporation India on Friday announced the roll out of its end-to-end VAT compliant solution 'AdVATage' aimed at the SMB segment. "With the nearing VAT regime its imperative that SMBs build efficiencies by adoption of VAT compliant IT solutions", Rajeev Mittal, director small and medium solutions and partners (SMS&P), Microsoft said in a release here. "There is pressing need to educate businesses in this segment on the fundamentals of VAT and how they can leverage IT to integrate VAT enabled accounting solutions with their existing IT infrastructure," he said.

Seminars would be conducted to launch AdVATage solution in Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad, to reach out to SMBs across the country and generate awareness on adoption of VAT solutions enabling them to leap into a high growth phase, he said. The seminar will comprise of interactive discussions to explain the fundamentals of VAT and its implications for the SMB segment in particular, Mittal added.