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Displacing fellow opener, good friend and his Delhi daredevil team mate Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag has climbed up the ladder to make it to the no. 1 spot on the ICC test cricket rankings. He scored a brisk 165 in the Kolkata Test sending the South African bowlers in disarray. India also won that test later on to stay on the top test team and get a reward of $1, 75,000 on April 1. Before the Kolkata test he scored a 109 in Nagpur but was in vain as India eventually lost the match.

Blackstone Group, a private equity giant, has reportedly reached to a deal to restructure debts of its Hilton hotels chain. Blackstone has been in talks with Hilton's lenders to cut its debt for some months. Now the sources said that Hilton's lenders and Blackstone are finalizing a deal.

The Rural Electrical Co-operation, the state run power sector company, had earlier announced to come with a follow on public offer. The issue opened on Friday and got 29% subscribed on day one. The floor price was fixed on Wednesday which was Rs. 203 at 8% discount from the prevailing market price.

The offer which closes on 23 February attracted the maximum bids at a price of Rs. 204. Total 17.17 crore shares were on offer out of which 4.97 crore shares were subscribed for on day 1. The stock exchange data suggested it was 0.29 times the shares on offer.

India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) is likely to carry on its hiring spree to next fiscal year.

State Bank of India has recently launched an e-learning package of Indian Institute of Banking and Finance. SBI needs manpower for these new processes.

SBI is planning to hire around 15,000-20,000 people in next fiscal year 2011. State Bank of India already has recruited 25,000 employees in the current year. For next year also, SBI is going to touch this figure. In the year 2008-09, SBI had recruited 27,000 staff across its verticals.

Economists are forecasting UK interest rates could remain at a record low for the rest of this year. The expected figure might be of 0.5% or even lesser. Meanwhile 0.5% is the lowest since the Bank of England's creation in 1694.

The news came up just after the meeting of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. Official data indicates that the annual UK consumer prices index inflation jumped from 2.9% in December to 3.5% in January. This was well above the 2% target.

Windstream Corporation is an S&P 500 company with about $3.7 billion in annual revenues. Windstream provides phone, high-speed Internet and high-definition digital TV services to customers in 21 states.

The company's fourth quarter 2009 profit was down by 7 percent mainly on the back of higher costs as well as losses in its traditional phone customers. Cell Phone Companies and cable Internet phone service are capturing the phone companies' landline customers.