The Board also approved the following two important proposals:-

1. To close the Equity Trading Activity of the Company with effect from 1st April, 2002 with a view to realizing the ultimate objective of concentrating on its core business of information technology.

2. To merge Sarthak Mercantile Private Limited (SMPL), a special purpose vehicle of the Hinduja Group, holding equity stake in some of the HTMT's existing subsidiaries with HTMT from 1st April, 2002, subject to necessary approvals.

The above decisions have been taken in line with the recommendations of the Consultants 'Accenture' who had suggested that high risk speculative equity trading business should be removed from a public limited company and a simpler structure of HTMT and its TMT businesses with intermediate layer of 100% (and not 51%) subsidiary would impart greater transparency to the structure.
While the shareholding of HTMT in Aasia Industrial Technologies Limited, which controls the media subsidiaries of the Group, will go up from 51% to 100%, its stake in the internet company In2Cable (India) Limited will increase from 90% to 100% on account of the merger.

It may be observed from the Annual Report 2000-01 of HTMT that the Company had decided to defer the merger of SMPL, which would have increased the paid-up capital of HTMT to Rs. 45.72 Crores from the present level of Rs. 35.58 Crores due to uncertain market conditions. However, SMPL shareholders have agreed to accept the revised swap ratio of the shares of HTMT and SMPL at 1:4 as against the earlier proposal of 10:21 in the interest of non-promoter shareholders of HTMT, who will stand to gain significantly because the promoter shareholding will now go up only by about Rs. 5 Crores instead of Rs. 10 Crores as a result of the merger.

As regards closure of the Equity Trading Activity, it is the logical culmination of the steps taken by the Company including the surrendering of NBFC licence to RBI to phase out the Company's finance activities.