indian shares provisionally closed 1.9 percent higher today

• The 30-share BSE index provisionally ended up 1.86 percent or 355.75 points at 19,477.58, with 28 components gaining. Auto, IT and metal remained the prime gainers and banks also registered good gains.
• India’s exports surged to record high growth in fiscal year 2010/11, but uncertainty over the global economy and a ballooning import bill mean concerns persist over the trade deficit of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
• Stock index futures pointed to a stronger open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.8 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.5 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.8 percent at 0847 GMT.
• Upbeat earnings from companies including chip maker Intel lifted stocks and boosted appetite for riskier assets on Wednesday, driving commodities higher and the Australian dollar to a 29-year high versus the dollar.
• Brent crude rose above $122 a barrel on Wednesday, helped by a rebound in equities and a weaker dollar.
• Tokyo stocks snapped a three-day losing streak on Wednesday after Intel’s earnings guidance sparked short-covering in chip-related stocks, but trade is expected to stay thin ahead of forecasts from Japanese firms.
• Spot gold prices breached $1,500 for the first time and silver hit a 31-year high on Wednesday, supported by a weak dollar and concerns over a sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone.
• The euro and commodity currencies surged higher in thin trading conditions on Wednesday, as upbeat corporate earnings in the U.S. prompted investors to buy riskier assets amid rising growth expectations.
• U.S. oil rose on Tuesday in volatile trade as a weaker dollar and stronger equities lifted prices and offset concerns over sovereign debt and uncertain demand prospects.
• General Motors Co has a better grasp of how to handle disruptions in its global network of suppliers, said GM’s chief executive, who also reiterated the automaker’s outlook for vehicle sales this year.
• Yes Bank on Wednesday reported a 45 percent jump in January-March net profit to 2.03 billion rupees as compared to a net profit of 1.4 billion rupees over the same period last year.
• Global miner Rio Tinto said it has control over 72 percent of takeover target Riversdale after Brazil’s CSN accepted its offer.
• India should allow exports of wheat and rice as the country has huge grain stocks and global prices are favourable, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday.
• A top executive at Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co (BAIC) said on Wednesday the Chinese state auto group was not currently in talks to invest in ailing Swedish car brand Saab, with which it shares some vehicle technology.
• Shares in DB Realty, Unitech and Reliance Communications fell on Wednesday, after a CBI court rejected bail applications of executives involved in the telecoms graft trial.
• Online travel firm Yatra Online Private Ltd said on Wednesday it received 2 billion rupees in funds from investors including Valiant Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

Big oil firms are offloading their refineries to different kinds of buyer

• The twinkling lights of an oil refinery at dusk show the potential for beauty in industrial landscapes. But the dramatic silhouettes, part ocean liner, part funfair, disguise the difficulties within. Decades of poor returns from turning crude oil into petrol, diesel and other fuels have convinced the Western oil giants to get out of the business. In their place come mainly state-run oil firms from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, and private equity
• Essar, an Indian conglomerate, this week paid Shell $1.3 billion for the Stanlow refinery in north-west England. In February, state-owned PetroChina paid $1 billion for a half-share in Scotland’s Grangemouth refinery and in another at Lavéra in the south of France. Many more refineries are for sale in Europe and America. Britain’s BP, which is raising cash to pay the bill for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, wants to sell two huge ones in America. Valero, an American refiner, may show interest, though it has just bought a plant in Wales from Chevron for $1.75 billion.
• American private-equity firms may also be taking a look at BP’s plants. According to FACTS Global Energy, a consultancy, over the past two years private-equity buyers have snapped up refining capacity of around 1m barrels of crude a day (b/d). State-backed oil companies, such as PetroChina and Russia’s Rosneft, have bought nearly the same amount.
• The refining business has suffered from chronic overcapacity, and thus weak margins, since the 1970s oil shocks, which led to a slump in the use of oil-based fuels for generating electricity and heating homes. A respite came in 2005-07, as a buoyant rich world and increasingly thirsty emerging economies boosted demand. But that was a high point that the rich world may not hit again. Demand for petrol in America has fallen, and may never regain its previous peak. Refining margins, having touched $4.50 a barrel, are down to one-tenth of that and still falling.
• It makes sense for big Western oil companies to get out of such an unprofitable business and put the capital into exploration and drilling. But refineries’ weak margins are not deterring oil firms from emerging economies from buying them. One reason is that they are going cheap. This gives the buyers access to declining but still sizeable rich-world markets. Such access is especially useful for those with ambitions to become global oil traders.
• As they buy refineries abroad, emerging-market firms continue to build them back home, where demand is still booming. For those firms owned or backed by their home governments, there are other considerations besides commercial ones. China, although it is set to remain a big importer of crude, is desperate to become at least self–sufficient in refining. By 2015 it will boost its domestic capacity by 20%, taking the total to 12m b/d. Middle Eastern oil producers are also building refining capacity to add value to the crude that they pump out of the ground.
• All this extra capacity will keep global refining margins under pressure for at least another five or six years, believes Francis Osborne of Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy. That may not bother state oil companies much, but it ought to worry private-equity firms. So why are they buying? First, because prices are so low. Second, because they are looking optimistically to the long term. Martin Brand of Blackstone, a private-equity giant that has bought three refineries in America in recent years, thinks margins will have recovered in ten years’ time, and in the interim there will be plenty of efficiency gains to be made.
• Others are sceptical. The European and American refineries’ new owners will be far less likely to close them than their old ones. In the absence of such a rationalisation of capacity, thinks Gemma Gouldby of FACTS Global Energy, margins will stay poor indefinitely. If so, the Western oil majors will be glad they got rid of them.