The slump in corporate earnings has affected interim payouts, with only 95 firms declaring interim dividends in the first nine months of this financial year compared with 144 in the corresponding period last year.
There are very few takers for B Ramalinga Raju's astounding claim that the margin earned by Satyam in the quarter ended September 2008 was just 3 per cent, and not 24 per cent as reported in the results.
The Oct-Dec show is the worst in the last eight quarters. On sequential basis, orders have declined by a record 36 per cent.
Once criticised as inhibitory, India's strict regulatory norms have protected local banks from the global financial tsunami.
Block deal transactions by foreign institutional investors registered a significant fall in October and November. The decline was mainly because of major deal makers cashing out of the equity market to make good their mark-to-market losses and meet redemption pressure.
Eighteen companies, collectively planning to raise Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) through initial public offers, will benefit from the Securities and Exchange Board of India's new norms to extend the IPO validity period from three months to a year.
The global credit crisis has slowed order growth of Indian construction and engineering companies, indicating that several big projects, planned earlier, are being pushed back either for lack of capital, or because they have become unviable now.
The tide for Indian firms seems to be turning. As much as 41 per cent of companies announcing their second-quarter results have registered a drop in profit.
Sales of 137 firms up 29.7%, but operating margins dip.
On January 8, there were 252 firms as against 122 now.
After four years of growth at 40 per cent or more, capital expenditure (capex) by India Inc in the current financial year (2008-09) may drop almost 30 per cent.
India Inc's creamy layer - executive directors and above - rewarded themselves handsomely with a 36 per cent pay rise in 2007-08.
The combined stake of foreign institutional investors in the top 500 Indian companies has dropped to a two-year low of 18.18 per cent as on June 30, 2008 from a high of 19.86 per cent in the corresponding period a year ago.
Foreign institutional investors were the major sellers on the Indian bourses in the last six months, accounting for total outflows of Rs 62,000 crore (Rs 620 billion).
The high interest rate regime is unlikely to hit larger companies' ongoing projects, at least for now.
As a result, new projects may have to be put on the backburner.
Weighed down by a sharp rise in input costs and limited ability to pass on the burden to customers, India Inc's operating margins took a hard knock in the first quarter of 2008-09 even though demand was buoyant as reflected in zooming sales.
More than 42 per cent of the funds mobilised through initial public offers in the last one year are idling away either in banks or debt schemes.
The Tata group companies increased their dividend payout to 28.3 per cent in the financial year ended March 2008 from 27.3 per cent a year earlier, while the corporate sector (1,121 dividend paying companies) pruned the dividend payout from 25.22 per cent to 23.04 per cent.
India Inc's order-books swelled to Rs 37,666 crore (Rs 376.66 billion) in the first quarter of the financial year 2008-2009, up 93 per cent from Rs 19,520 crore (Rs 195.2 billion) for the same period last year. In the fourth quarter of 2007-08, the order-book had increased by 121 per cent to Rs 42,545 crore
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