Singapore - Singapore Petroleum Company Limited and Eni International B V, equal joint venture partners in ItalSing Petroleum Company Pte Ltd, Wednesday sold a combined 55 per cent stake in ItalSing to Nippon Oil (Asia) Pte Ltd of Japan.

SPC and ENI will each continue to hold 22.5 per cent in ItalSing Petroleum, SPC said in a statement.

Nippon will continue to use the ItalSing facilities to manufacture and blend lube oils for the local and overseas markets.

"With Nippon Oil's global lubricant networks and markets, ENI and SPC look forward to working with Nippon Oil to create and enhance the value of our joint investment in ItalSing," SPC chief executive officer Koh Ban Heng said.

Japanese drug major, Daiichi Sankyo has completely acquired 52.5 per cent equity stake in India's Ranbaxy Laboratories. The process is carried out through off-market and stock exchange transactions. Ranbaxy Laboratories is the largest pharmaceutical company of the country. It has become the subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo after acquisition of majority shares. The deal worth Rs 19,850 crore was initiated in June this year. It would enable Daiichi to use the generic expertise of Raanbaxy.

The increasing problems for the Indian Carriers due to rising expenses, especially the rise in aviation fuel recently initiated an unwanted episode of firing of employees.

Following this, the owner of Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya approached the Parliament and Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways knocked the door of finance minister P Chidambaram with the aim to get tax relief for airlines.

“Job cuts and layoffs coupled with high aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices and larger taxes can affect in the number of flights which is likely to go down,” reported Mallya.