Here is good news for home buyers planning to take a loan of above Rs 20 lakh.

India’s top mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC), on Friday, has slashed housing loan rates for new loans by 50 basis points (bps) for a limited period.

Under the scheme, home loan clients can now avail loans between Rs 20-30 lakh at an annual interest rate of 9.75%, down from 11.25% earlier.

Moreover, the customers looking for loans above Rs 30 lakh would have to pay an annual interest rate of 10.75%.

Maytas Properties, the realty division of Maytas Infra, has decided to shut down its four arms including hospitality, warehousing, affordable housing and retirement communities.

It is also learnt that the above decision has also resulted in the company issuing “pink slips” to about 80% of the 500 strong staff even as Maytas Properties has ceased most of its projects.

Automobile giant, Bajaj Auto posted 22.43 per cent decline in net profit for the quarter ended December 2008. Its net profit stands at Rs 166 crore as against Rs 214 crore in the same period last year.

Decline in vehicle sales and tight liquidity conditions contributed to the decline in profit for the quarter under consideration.

Company's turnover declined 15.84 percent and currently stands at Rs 2,141 crore. It sold 493,748 units of vehicles with 31 per cent decline as compared to 713,135 units sold in the same period last year.

Federal Bank has posted a net profit of Rs 203.89 crore for the third quarter (Q3) ending December 31, 2009, as against Rs 102.92 crore during the corresponding period of the last year (December 2007).

The Kerala-based bank said that a sharp increase in other income and lower interest income helped it to post nearly two-fold increase in its net profit.

The bank said, “The figures for the corresponding previous periods are not reclassified and therefore not comparable.”

A consultation paper on “Bandwidth required for ISPs for better connectivity and improved quality of service”, was released on Thursday by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

It is learnt that TRAI has issued this process to seek the views of the stakeholders so that it can develop a framework to fortify the existing regulations on quality of broadband service.

According to TRAI, there is a strong prerequisite to identify easily monitorable and enforceable QoS measures. This is mainly in regard to guarantee that a bare minimum (floor) bandwidth is on hand with service providers for provisioning of broadband and internet services with reasonable assured quality to its subscribers.

The financial arm of Intel, Intel Capital has announced investment plans for various Indian companies. It would invest $23 million in three Indian companies namely One97 Communications, IndiaMART. com and Global Talent Track.

The company formed an Intel Capital India Technology Fund worth $250-million in December 2005 and a major portion of this fund would be used to fund these companies.