Nirmaljit Singh Hoon has moved the Delhi High Court seeking Rs.15,000 crore as compensation in a fraud case.

Mr Hoon's counsel submitted that his client was denied rightful shares of his company Hungerford Investment Trust Ltd, of which 2256 shares valued at over Rs.15000 crore were forged, duplicated and auctioned by RBI officials with the connivance of IT officials without informing Hoon.

Although Hoon still has the original shares in his possession, the forged shares were treated by the buyer and the board of directors as genuine, and thus Hoon lost ownership of his own company.

Mr Hoon has requested the High Court to award the compensation and to also order restoration of ownership of the company to him.

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Forbes Asia's 'Best Under a Billion' list for this year includes 35 Indian companies ranked among the top 200 Asia-Pacific corporations. Among the Indian companies mentioned are SRF, manufacturers of chemical-based industrial intermediates; Polyplex, makers of polyester film; Glodyne Technoserve, an IT services company.

India's largest storage-battery producer Exide Industries was not on the list this year as it outgrew the list for having breached the $1 billion sales mark in the past 12 months.

India was second only to 65 firms from both China and Hong Kong that found a place on the Asia Pacific list that ranks public companies in the region with annual revenues between $5 million and $1 billion.

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According to Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer, India will have some 403,000 dollar millionaires by year 2015.

Asia will add 1.66 million dollar-millionaires by 2015, taking the total number of wealthy to 2.82 million as the world's fastest growing economies China and India continue to mint millionaires.

India will more than double its number of High Networth Individuals while Indonesia will see the highest growth rate in the number of wealthy, up by a quarter to 99,000.

Baer forecast that China and India will collectively contribute 40 percent to global growth for 2011 and 2012.

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International tyre manufacturer Continental, confirmed it plans to invest 50 million euros in its Indian operations, to ramp up production of passenger and commercial vehicle tyres.

Nikolai Setzer, executive board member of Continental AG confirmed the company sees robust demand in the segment in the coming years and the company plans to increase production at its Modipuram plant this year. It will also increase its work force from the current 1600 to around 2400 within the next few years.

Continental recently acquired Modi Tyres Company Ltd and formed the new entity Continental India Ltd.

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A survey of almost 300 leading companies showed that the business confidence index slumped to a two year low in the April - June quarter. Companies covered in the survey include textiles, steel and energy sectors, autos and consumer goods.

Both global and domestic factors and growing apprehensions about the world economy entering into another recession seems to have dented the level of confidence of India Inc.

At the domestic level, rising interest costs and weak domestic demand both partly attributable to the monetary policy pursued by the Reserve Bank of India are taking their toll. The RBI has hiked interest 11 times in 18 months in an effort to curb inflation running close to double-digits.

India's economy however has grown by 8.6 percent a year since 2006 and the government is predicting similar growth for this fiscal year to March 2012.

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