As Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee prepares to leave for Rashtrapati Bhavan, here is a glimpse of select members of the top team that worked with him&nbsp;(Click&nbsp;on graphic)

Appointments pranab made during his tenure

Business Standard

Graphic shows select results from the latest Bloomberg National Poll.

Obama narrowly favoured by swing voters

In recession-ravaged Britain, the pay of Queen Elizabeth II raised by &pound;6 million ($12 million) to &pound;36million.

Living life queen size

As Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee prepares for life at Rashtrapati Bhavan, here&rsquo;s a look at what remains incomplete in his to-do list at North Block

Pranab's unfinished agenda

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says he&rsquo;s no astrologer, but he&rsquo;s an economist and so are some of his key advisors. What they say counts, which is why the media is keen to have their outlook on the economy.

Getting it wrong, consistently

The Competition Commission of India&rsquo;s order on Thursday that the 10 largest cement companies and industry body Cement Manufacturers&rsquo; Association should pay a cumulative fine of Rs 6,307 crore, as a penalty for forming a cartel to control prices, is a welcome step forward for market regulation in India. It is the first order of such magnitude since the passage of the Competition Act, 2002, which was supposed to ensure free and fair competition, and has been viewed as an act of assertion by the Competition Commission of India (CCI). Each of the 11 entities will have to pay a penalty equal to 50 per cent of its declared profit in 2009-10 and 2010-11, within 90 days of the order&rsquo;s passage. The order has several points of note. First, it specifies that written evidence of cartelisation is not necessary.

Concrete movement 

Broking firms offer systematic investment plans (SIPs) in stocks.

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Apropos T N Ninan&rsquo;s column &ldquo;The &lsquo;Talwar Amendment&rsquo;&rdquo; (Weekend Ruminations, June 23), here is another Talwar moment. R K Talwar had shown exceptional foresight and commitment in the early seventies by getting State Bank of India (SBI) to finance an agri-business venture, the first such project by any Indian bank. In the first half of 1976, a colleague from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and I were retained to advise Mr Talwar and his top-level team at SBI about the serious problems the firm faced back then and possible solutions. We concluded that the promoter&rsquo;s errors of judgment in dealing with unforeseen circumstances were the root cause. We worked out a detailed nursing plan, with the promoter managing the company&rsquo;s affairs under far stricter SBI oversight. Talwar accepted this, but Mr Natarajan, then third in the hierarchy, strongly opposed it.

Letters: Reminiscing Talwar

The Union of European Football Associations&rsquo;s European football championship, which has coincided with the continuing struggle to save the common European currency, has led to many jokes about the Euro and the euro.

Euro and euro

Speculation continues to swirl around whether or not Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will take his trusted team with him when (and if) he moves to Rashtrapati Bhavan. His long-standing lieutenant and advisor, Omita Paul, who was once expected to retire with Mr Mukherjee&rsquo;s elevation, is now believed to be likely to move with him. Whether or not she gets the post of Secretary to the President &ndash; a highly coveted position, with one of the best bungalows in New Delhi made available ex officio &ndash; is unclear. The current incumbent, Christie Fernandez, has raised the post&rsquo;s profile, but it is now expected that he will leave with Pratibha Patil. Meanwhile, it might be the end of the road, too, for Finance Secretary R S Gujral, with rumours swirling that Expenditure Secretary Sumit Bose is preparing for an elevation.

Retirement Bhavan

This refers to the report &ldquo;CCI levies penalty of Rs 6,300 cr on 11 cement firms&rdquo; (June 21). The impact of price cartelisation would have already been borne by the innumerable customers of the construction industry - home owners or small-time builders who would have paid a heavy retail price for cement bags.

Letters: Well done CII

The Sangma camp, of course, would strongly disagree that Mr Mukherjee and Ms Paul should start planning the curtains for their new houses, as the saying goes. P A Sangma&rsquo;s daughter, Agatha Sangma, has continued to support her father&rsquo;s presidential ambitions, even while she continues to be a member of the UPA&rsquo;s council of ministers. Indeed, Mr Sangma&rsquo;s war room is at 34 Aurangzeb Road, Agatha&rsquo;s official residence. This has led to much grumbling, with many asking why Agatha, the council&rsquo;s youngest member, receives preferential treatment. While Mr Sangma has been stressing his identity as a Christian and a member of a Scheduled Tribe &ndash; saying &ldquo;corporate India may be with Pranab, but God is with me&rdquo; &ndash; Agatha has not been too far behind.

The Sangma mystery

Apropos M S Sriram&rsquo;s review of October Coup: A Memoir of the Struggle for Hyderabad (&ldquo;Bureaucrat on the burning deck,&rdquo; June 15), I&rsquo;d like to comment on two issues raised by the reviewer. He expresses mild disappointment that the book is not a review of high policy issues then in play: whether integration or independence was the appropriate policy for Hyderabad to pursue; whether police action was necessary; and whether, subsequently, the state should have been fragmented on linguistic lines. As he rightly points out, such issues have formed the basis of earlier works like the late Omar Khalidi&rsquo;s Hyderabad After the Fall. But the author of these memoirs was collector of Osmanabad district in 1948. He was writing about his legitimate preoccupations, at his level, in a sensitive border district. The negotiations at the centre are not the main focus of the book.

Letters: Personal histories

Apropos the front-page report &ldquo;Target companies see red as analysts turn activists&rdquo; (June 21), shareholder activism should protect and further the interests of all stakeholders in a company. The activism of brokerage houses and advisory services should not be guided by their own business considerations. A group of shareholders who own an insignificant number of shares cannot be allowed to hold a company&rsquo;s management to ransom by claiming that they represent all minority shareholders.

Letters: Activism or pressure tactic?

How some political party activists apply their brain to cover-ups was evident from a recently conducted income-tax raid on houses and business premises in Bhopal of two close associates of prominent members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including some ministers. The two-day raids led to &ldquo;unofficial&rdquo; revelations of how a small real-estate player steered his company&rsquo;s turnover from Rs 13 crore to Rs 1,000 crore in the last three or four years.

Raid reasons

When All India Radio FM first emerged, young Indians all over the country tuned in to listen to Western music for the first time on their radios. These, however, may be the last few days of Western music on All India Radio&rsquo;s FM channel, Rainbow. The buzz is that Rainbow may replace its Western music shows with Hindi music soon. AIR FM remains the mainstay for Western music, since very few private FM radio stations play it. It is believed that the move may be linked to copyright issues; but veteran listeners of AIR FM are a disappointed lot.

Listen to the radio

News of the tragic fire at Mantralaya, the Maharashtra state secretariat in downtown Mumbai, had barely begun to spread across the city before rumours followed in its wake that the fire had been deliberately set to get rid of records and files, including those involving the Adarsh housing society scandal. So pervasive were the rumours that Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan actually had to issue a statement that all relevant files appeared to be secure. But it isn&rsquo;t just Mumbai that&rsquo;s subject to such rumours. They also circulated in the aftermath of a fire last week in North Block, which gutted two rooms of the finance ministry, about to be vacated by Pranab Mukherjee. Summer breeds not just fire, but also conspiracy theories.

Fire and smoke

The division bench of the Calcutta High Court annulling the law under which the Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal sought to return land to Singur farmers unwilling to sell to the Tatas is not the last word on the subject. Most likely, the state will appeal to the Supreme Court. While a part of the verdict rests on a technicality &ndash; the legislation, dealing with a subject under the concurrent list, lacks the President&rsquo;s approval &ndash; it also points out that returning land to landowners and farmers cannot be deemed to be in the public interest. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has hinted that she will follow a dual-track approach &mdash; legal and political. For the latter, she appears on the way to reviving the grass-roots coalition of forces that spearheaded the agitation against what was described as forcible acquisition of land for the Nano project.

Setback to Trinamool

Even as Pakistan&rsquo;s polity has been thrown into confusion by the disqualification of its prime minister by its Supreme Court, its economy is reeling from 18-hour power cuts. The Pakistan People&rsquo;s Party (PPP) government, ending its five-year term, has had a mixed record with the economy. As Table 1 shows, it inherited growth momentum from the Musharraf years, but its growth began to dip even before the financial crisis hit, and is now steady at well below 4 per cent a year.

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