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Spark Capital Enters Broking: Spark Capital Advisors, a Chennai-based investment bank, has announced its entry into institutional brokerage and securities business. This will probably make Spark Capital the first south-based firm to offer full service investment banking. Spark Capital, since it set up shop in 2001, has advised on fund raising and M&A transactions worth over $1 billion in aggregate.
The firm has a Category I merchant banking license, investment management practice, and a securities division, which will provide research based services to institutional investors and funds. The firm has procured corporate memberships in BSE, NSE and MCX. Besides Chennai, the firm has an office in Bangalore, while it plans to expand its presence to Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Federal Mogul Sells India Pistons Stake: Amalgamated Group has bought its foreign partner Federal Mogul's stake in India Pistons. Amalgamated group company Simpson & Co has bought out Federal Mogul's 30 per cent stake reportedly for $14 million. Federal Mogul already owns 50.1 per cent stake in India Pistons competitor in India Goetze (India) Ltd, which is now called Federal-Moguls Goetze. Now Rs 400 crore India Pistons will be the wholly owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Group. Interestingly, the company also announced a technical collaboration with Mahle GmbH of Germany, which was an erstwhile collaborator of Goetze (then it was called Escorts Mahle Ltd).

AutoIndia Gets US Auto Marketer As Advisor: Indian auto portal AutoIndia.com announced the appointment of veteran internet marketer Patrick Stanton to its Board of Advisors. Stanton will assist Autoindia.com’s new initiatives and alliances aimed at increasing revenues and market share in Indian automotive sector, a release said. Stanton is Vice President, Business Development, for Dealix Corporation (since acquired by The Cobalt Group), an automotive internet marketing organisation in the US. Stanton is also a founder and the corporate development chair of the California Clean Tech Open, the world’s largest business plan competition in clean technologies. He also recently founded angel investment and advisory group, Chobe Group, LLC, to bring best practices in automobile retailing to emerging markets, notably in India and China.

Wipro's Tiny Buy: This deal shows that Wipro can indeed make smaller acquisitions. Bangalore-based IT giant has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Oki Techno Centre Singapore Pte Ltd (OTCS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan's OKI Electric Industry Co Ltd. The deal size is not disclosed, but is reportedly in the range of $2-3 million. That's much smaller than its earlier acquisitions which is usually in the $30-50 million range or higher. OTCS is a 40 member centre and has customers in Japan in product engineering space. It primarily focuses on wireless design and has expertise in Radio Frequency and baseband design. "Wipro sees this acquisition as a strategic fitment in building niche competencies which would enhance our presence among our technology companies in Japan," company's Chief Strategy Officer Sudip Nandy has been quoted as saying.