Morning:
8°c
It may be cutting costs to the bone back home in the Midlands but Jaguar Land Rover is not shy of extravagance when it needs to keep up appearances.
Chief executive David Smith and his team were in Mumbai at the weekend to open the company's first-ever showroom in India, home to its owner, Tata Motors.
So where did they choose to locate it? In Ceejay House, the single most expensive office location in the whole of India.
"It's a premium property: the brand befits the location," the company's India head Rohit Suri explained.
To be fair, they're following in the footsteps of other Brits.
Barclays Bank last year broke Indian property records when it signed a deal to take 150,000 sq ft there for more than £9per sq ft per year. Rothschild also has part of a floor.
And the decision may even make business sense. Bob Grace, head of overseas business at Land Rover, told me he expected hundreds rather than thousands of buyers to begin with, and that those buyers would most likely be drawn from that bunch of high-rollers who would be visiting Ceejay House already.
But when Jaguar Land Rover enters the next round of discussions with the UK Government about a guarantee for its �340 million loan from the European Investment Bank, its lavish spending may nonetheless raise questions.
• The skies above Mahim Bay were bright with fireworks last night to celebrate the opening of the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a 650-metre cable-stayed bridge joining north and south Mumbai.
It's the city's biggest - indeed practically only - new infrastructure in 50 years, so celebration is in order (even if it is six years late and six times over budget).
But some fear its troubles aren't yet over. The bridge spills onto a sharp turn, so it may create a new traffic nightmare.
It's also set at a right angle to the strongest monsoon winds.
There is talk, only half in jest, of flying Tata Nano cars spinning across the bay.
• In one respect, the Sea Link is lucky. On Saturday, I had lunch in the slightly surreal Maharashtra Cricket Association building, a plush facsimile of a colonial-era club set amid the rubble and shining office blocks of Mumbai's new Bandra-Kurla business district.
Next door was the Bharat Diamond Bourse, Mumbai's bid to supplant Antwerp as a global diamond trading centre.
The building has been completed and has been waiting for a "no-objection certificate" from the authorities since long before I arrived in Mumbai.
Its peeling paintwork and decrepit exterior now makes me wonder if it might crumble before it ever gets it.
