The government on Monday signed the share purchase agreement with Tata Sons for the sale of national carrier Air India for Rs 18,000 crore. Earlier this month, the government had accepted an offer by Talace Pvt Ltd, a unit of the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate, to pay Rs 2,700 crore cash and take over Rs 15,300 crore of the airline's debt. Following that, on October 11 a Letter of Intenet (LoI) was issued to the Tata Group confirming the government's willingness to sell its 100 per cent stake in the airline.
The repo rate continues to be at 8 per cent while the cash reserve ratio has also been retained at 4 per cent despite inflation based on the Wholesale Price Index coming down to a 5-year low of 1.77 per cent in October.
As corporate India prepares to put its house in order, the transition raises concerns
Debt-ridden telecom operator Vodafone Idea on Tuesday approved the allotment of equity shares worth Rs 16,133 crore to the government, which post-allocation has become the largest shareholder with a 33.44 per cent stake in the company. The shares have been allocated to the government in lieu of conversion of interest dues arising from deferment of adjusted gross revenue and spectrum auction payments, the company said in a regulatory filing. "...it is hereby informed that the board of directors of the company has, at its meeting held today approved the allotment of 16,133,198,899 equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each at an issue price of Rs 10 per equity share aggregating to Rs 161,331,848,990 to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, Government of India," the filing said.
India is Asia's third-best performing equity market.
'It's a clear case of political patronage helping an individual grow.'
UK's Cairn Energy Plc plans to bring lawsuits in the US and other countries to pierce the corporate veil between the Indian government and its owned companies such as in oil and gas, shipping, airline and banking sectors, to seize their overseas assets to recover $1.2 billion ordered by an international arbitration tribunal. The firm has moved courts in the US, UK, Canada, France, Singapore, the Netherlands and three other countries to register the December 2020 arbitration tribunal ruling that overturned the Indian government's Rs 10,247 crore demand in back taxes and ordered New Delhi to return $1.2 billion in value of shares it had sold, dividends seized and tax refunds withheld to recover the tax demand. With the government so far refusing to honour the arbitration award and instead choosing to challenge it, Cairn is looking to enforce it by seizing overseas Indian assets, Dennis Hranitzky, head of the sovereign litigation practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a law firm representing the company, told PTI.
Experts say it could make divorces amicable and help reduce court cases.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, will answers your MF queries.
The current episode highlights the structural vulnerabilities in the liquidity management practices of Indian NBFIs
Frozen mutual funds and shares worth Rs 86.72 crore belong to Choksi and his group, and the rest are owned by the Modi group.
NBFCs are facing the heat of a crisis at IL&FS, which defaulted on repayment of its commercial paper dues, leading to a contagion effect in the sector.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, answers your queries.
In 1937, a hydrogen-powered German airship flying into New Jersey caught fire and crashed, killing 35 passengers on board. It was sort of a man-made disaster as some 100 people were loaded on to a balloon filled with the most flammable material in the universe. The airship was named Hindenburg. Eight decades later, in 2017, a graduate of international business management from the University of Connecticut founded a "forensic financial research" firm to specialise in spotting wrongdoings and frauds, or what it calls man-made disasters, at companies around the globe and take market bets against them.
Fix India's real estate sector. Fix India's public sector banks, advises Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Axis Bank's acquisition of Citibank's consumer finance business for Rs 12,325 crore - the second biggest deal in the Indian banking sector - is seen as a good deal at a good price. The acquisition enables Axis Bank to close the gap with competition in some key segments such as credit cards. At the same time, there are some key issues that are crucial for the deal's success, apart from the fact that it will take some time for Axis to reap the full harvest of its investment.
If new goals have emerged, this is the time to make fresh investments.
Stick to low-cost ULIPs launched in the past few years. Go with an insurer with a good investment team and solid track record of long-term returns, suggests Sanjay Kumar Singh.
Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund, which has closed six debt schemes, has said the winding-up process will be delayed in the absence of authorisation from investors and further steps will be possible only after seeking fresh approval from them. It further said that investors who do not have an e-mail ID or mobile number registered with the fund house will not be able to participate in the voting process. The date on which the voting would start has not been disclosed yet.
The balance sheet of the Reserve Bank plays a critical role in the functioning of the country's economy.
Why do we need a bad bank, owned by the banks themselves when there are at least 28 ARCs around, asks Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank on Saturday reported a 23 per cent jump in standalone net profit to Rs 10,055.20 crore for the March quarter, led by growth in loan demand across categories and lower provisioning as bad loans were trimmed. The bank's net profit during the corresponding period of the previous fiscal stood at Rs 8,186.51 crore. "After providing Rs 2,989.5 crore for taxation, the bank earned a net profit of Rs 10,055.20 crore, an increase of 22.8 per cent over the quarter ended March 31, 2021," HDFC Bank said in a regulatory filing.
Debt-ridden Future Group is now focusing on saving and rebuilding firms such as -- Future Lifestyle Fashions, Future Supply Chain Solutions, Future Consumer and Future Enterprises, after the Rs 24,713-crore deal with Reliance Retail was rejected by secured creditors, according to industry sources. However, Future Group's flagship firm Future Retail Ltd (FRL), which has nearly Rs 18,000 crore debt, is bound to face the corporate insolvency resolution process before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). Other companies like Future Enterprises Ltd (FEL), Future Lifestyle Fashions Ltd (FLFL), Future Supply Chain Solutions Ltd (FSCSL), Future Consumer Ltd (FCL) can sustain on their own and can be rebuilt by restructuring their liabilities with the help of current lenders and investors, said an industry source close to the Future Group.
HDFC Bank, the country's largest private-sector lender, lost to competition wholesale loans of around Rs 50,000 crore after it increased interest rates in May, said Chief Financial Officer Srinivasan Vaidyanathan in an analyst call. "There were some customers who were offered lower rates by other market participants. "But we decided not to cut back on our rates," he said while addressing analysts after the announcement of the bank's Q1 earnings.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
One thing is for sure: It smacks of the regulator's lack of confidence in the bank's board, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Nearly three-fourths of the debt money, as of April 30, 2019, was invested in securities with duration of less than three years.
Hinting at further relaxation in the capital account convertibility norms, RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar on Thursday said the country is on the cusp of some fundamental shifts with regard to currency management. India has come a long way in achieving increasing levels of convertibility on the capital account and has broadly achieved the desired outcome for the policy choices in terms of achieving a stable composition of foreign capital inflow, Sankar said while addressing the Foreign Exchange Dealers' Association of India's (FEDAI) annual day meeting. Convertibility refers to the ability to convert domestic currency into foreign currencies and vice versa to make payments for balance of payments transactions.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
The immediate concern for all companies is to prepare themselves - and their vendors and suppliers - for the new GST return filing mechanism, being test piloted from April 1.
It has been a year since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated prompt corrective action (PCA), an exercise that puts weak banks under central bank scrutiny, against the 94-year-old Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB). But recently, this low-profile Chennai-headquartered bank found itself attracting some unwonted publicity when 60 per cent of its shareholders voted against a proposal to re-appoint seven directors, including one of the promoters, K R Pradeep (who holds around 2 per cent), and the company's managing director & chief executive officer S Sundar.
While the stress is lower than projections, it would be higher than what we saw last year because of the pandemic: Axis.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, answers your queries.
RBI's licensing norms require a bank to bring down promoter holding to 40 % within 3 years of operation - which, for Bandhan Bank, will be by Aug 23
'The business continuity clause will mean the Tatas will have to keep running the airline for three years, and cannot exit the flying business.'
Your decision to invest in capital gains bonds or otherwise should be determined by your risk appetite and investment objective among others.
The problems are being compounded by perceptions that India is ill suited to defend the currency in the near-term.
Physical advisors have been receiving tough competition from algorithm-based investment counselling and robo-advisories.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Friday said it has signed an agreement to buy Vodafone's 4.7 per cent stake in Indus Towers on the condition that the proceeds will be used for investment in Vodafone Idea and clearing its dues towards the mobile tower company. Debt-ridden Vodafone Idea (VIL) has been unable to pay dues to Indus Towers and both VIL and promoter Vodafone have proposed a payment plan to clear the outstanding amount by July 15. In the meantime, VIL has committed to pay certain minimum amount each month to Indus Towers.
Alvarez & Marsal will develop a detailed restructuring plan for the group to demonstrate to shareholders and lenders that it was self-sufficient in repaying its liabilities. So far, the IL&FS management had been working on its revival plan.