'I don't think there will be a direct reaction to the fuel price hike on air ticket prices.'
Transiting from "survival mode", which took most of the management time in FY21, the bank has been able to take a long-term view in terms of growth and preparing technology in the past 12 months.
For Indians, Sri Lanka is one of the favourite venues for destination weddings. But last month, when a family from Delhi chartered a Vistara Airbus A320 to Colombo, it packed much more than the standard paraphernalia of clothes, gifts and jewellery. The family ferried meals from Delhi for all the guests and to cover their entire stay in Colombo due to the food and fuel shortages in the island nation.
Is the worst over for Indian banks? The past two years saw them ride on treasury trades as deposits soared and credit growth dipped sharply. Gross and net non-performing assets (NPAs) moved south, and the provision coverage ratio (PCR), capital buffers, and profitability indicators are back at pre-pandemic levels. So, what's the plot ahead?
Sources said the process has taken time because of a delay in leasing of aircraft. As per the original plan the aircraft were to be leased through GIFT City, Gujarat, but this is proving costlier than doing it offshore.
National Medical Commission regulations prohibit Indian medical students overseas to transfer programmes from one university to another mid-way.
The country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) will revamp its banking application (app) YONO and position it as a complete digital bank (DB) under a new rubric 'Only YONO' for enhancing customer experience and ease of use. The bank plans to bring in a consultant to help draw up the project plan, keeping in mind business goals for the next five years. With 54 million monthly active users (MAUs), SBI YONO has seen growth of over 35 per cent in MAUs in 2021.
Indian customers will have wider travel options as airlines introduce new flights from the end of March. While Malaysian Airlines and Turkish Airlines are resuming passenger flights to India after a gap of two years, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa Group will scale up their existing service in a graded manner in the summer schedule. Emirates, the largest foreign airline operating in India, too, is looking to restore its pre-Covid-19 schedule of 172 flights per week.
With the international markets facing uncertainty after Russia invaded Ukraine and Western nations retaliated with sanctions, Indian companies are putting their international fundraising plans on hold as they wait for the markets to recover. Bankers said apart from the geopolitical crisis, international rates are hardening in anticipation of interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve to control rising prices in the US. The Ukraine situation has implications for the market. In such a situation, international investors try to shift to safe haven assets by exiting from emerging markets.
Zombies a.k.a perpetually loss-making firms in India seem to have dampened the effectiveness of monetary policy at the margin as they use borrowed resources more for their survival than for undertaking new investment, according to a RBI study. The monetary policy does not hinder the creative destruction process by misallocating credit flows to zombies during periods of economic slowdown, showed a study by officers of Reserve Bank of India. It has been published in RBI's bulletin for February 2022. In India, zombie firms are estimated to account for about 10 per cent of total debt of the non-financial corporate sector.
Commercial banks in the country continued with their improving asset quality trend in the October-December 2021 quarter with slippages remaining under control coupled with healthy recoveries and upgradation of asset classification. The 28-listed banks reported improvement in bottom line with net profits rising 64.1 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and 21.5 per cent sequentially. This is mostly on account of a fall in provisions and contingencies.
This is following revival of demand from the corporate sector and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), even as a nascent economic recovery is taking shape. Credit growth of scheduled commercial banks had accelerated to 9.2 per cent year-on-year (YoY) by the end of December 2021 after breaching the 7 per cent-mark in November, for the first time since April 2020.
The Tatas have the know-how to quickly close deals which can otherwise get caught in legal wrangle. In 2018, on the day the National Company Law Tribunal declared Tata Steel as the winner of the bid for bankrupt Bhushan Steel, Bhushan promoter Neeraj Singhal was planning to file for a stay order. He did get the case listed for the following day, but the judge did not admit it, deferring it until the following week. The Tatas used the narrow window of 48 hours to close the deal and take control of the company.
The consortium of UAE-based businessman Murari Lal Jalan and UK-based private equity fund Kalrock Capital is rushing to restart Jet Airways' operations, even though differences have emerged over who will fund expenses before operations commence, sources said. The airline applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for recertification of its air operator certificate in the last week of January. The regulator is likely to inspect the airline's preparedness to operate a flight in the middle of this month, after which it will be asked to operate a proving flight to demonstrate its ability to conduct flights safely and in accordance with rules.
Air India is set to enhance its in-flight service with a change in ownership from Thursday. This will include more variety in on-board meals, improved in-flight service procedures, and reintroduction of amenities. Non-vegetarian meals are being introduced in the economy class of domestic flights after a gap of nearly four years. Air India is set to enhance its in-flight service with a change in ownership from Thursday. This will include more variety in on-board meals, improved in-flight service procedures, and reintroduction of amenities.
Veterans in the travel industry, a well-known corporate lawyer, and a marquee US-based hedge fund have backed the upcoming low-cost airline Akasa Air. Founded by former Jet Airways chief executive officer (CEO) Vinay Dube, the venture counts ace stock trader and investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala as its biggest financial backer with an investment of around Rs 300 crore. A person with knowledge of the development said most of the people were well known to Jhunjhunwala and Dube, who approached them during the conception stage.
Banks and companies in India are taking a cautious approach towards Sri Lanka, which, reeling from a financial crisis, has sought a $1-billion loan from the country to import essential commodities. A senior State Bank of India (SBI) executive said the bank was committed (to Sri Lanka) for the long term. "As far as exposures (are concerned), the bank will be cautious on its dollar exposure to Sri Lankan entities till the situation improves," he said.
'Our focus is not going to be metro to metro routes.' 'We will begin by focusing on metro to non-metro (routes).' 'Metro to tier-2 cities or tier-3 cities is where there is a lot of space for affordable, efficient carriers.'
In a bad start to the new year, hotels are counting their losses again. Weddings and corporate events for this month have either been called off or postponed. The blow has throttled the nascent recovery which had kicked in around August. It is primarily hurting the banquet-driven hotel chains, some of which are seeing cancellations running into lakhs for a single day.
Jet Airways is seeing a churn in its senior management ahead of its planned take-off this year. Sudhir Gaur, accountable manager and acting chief executive officer, is the latest to quit the company. Finance head M Shivakumar and head of management information system (MIS) Farazad Patrawalla moved out a few weeks earlier. Gaur had been part of the initial team selected by the Kalrock-Jalan consortium, which secured approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) last June to revive the airline.
© 2025 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances