This is the full text of the address to the nation by President Droupadi Murmu on the eve of India's 78th Independence Day.
Has Vijay Shekhar Sharma given up on the bank? For now, he seems to be on a save-OCL mission. The bank will face its logical end, observes Tamal Bandopadhyay.
The RBI's decision to tighten norms for unsecured personal loans is credit positive because lenders will need to allocate higher capital for such loans, thus improving their loss-absorbing buffers, Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The Reserve Bank last week raised risk weights on unsecured retail loans, credit cards and lending to non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) by 25 percentage points. Moody's said unsecured loans have been growing rapidly in the past few years, exposing financial institutions to a potential spike in credit costs in case of sudden economic or interest rate shocks.
Unlike for previous Olympics, the Paris 2024 opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium.
Among the Sensex firms, Bajaj Finance, Bharti Airtel, Maruti, Bajaj Finserv, HCL Technologies, Titan, Hindustan Unilever, JSW Steel, UltraTech Cement, State Bank of India and Reliance Industries were the major laggards.
After a recent fall in profit, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank announced that the Japanese tech investor will look at dramatic cost-cutting. Before he does that, investments in India for calendar year 2022 (CY22) will fall radically, observed sources in the know. Last year, the company had invested around $3.2-3.5 billion in the Indian start-up ecosystem - almost 10 per cent of the total investment the sector received. For CY22, the investments may not even touch $1 billion.
'We see mid-and small-caps as a real pot of gold.' 'From a 10-15 years perspective, mid-and small-cap are likely to outperform the larger index, as they have done in the past.'
BK Modi-promoted group registers company 10 days before the deadline
Among the Sensex firms, Larsen & Toubro, Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, Tata Motors, Sun Pharma and Tata Steel were the major gainers. On the other hand, Nestle, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank were among the laggards.
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
'Our unsecured loan is not exactly unsecured. It is backed by cash flow of customers.'
Benchmark equity indices Sensex and Nifty settled with marginal gains on Thursday in a highly volatile trade amid the scheduled monthly derivatives expiry and muted trend in the US markets. The 30-share BSE Sensex closed 86.53 points or 0.13 per cent higher at 66,988.44, registering its third day of gains. During the day, it hit a high of 67,069.89 and a low of 66,610.35.
Tata Steel fell the most by 4.21 per cent. NTPC, Tata Motors, HCL Technologies, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India, Power Grid, Tech Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro and JSW Steel also declined. HDFC Bank was the only gainer from the pack. In Asian markets, Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong settled in the positive territory while Shanghai ended lower.
Among the Sensex firms, Axis Bank fell over 4 per cent, emerging as the biggest laggard. State Bank of India, IndusInd Bank, NTPC, UltraTech Cement, Bajaj Finserv, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Maruti and Larsen & Toubro were the other major laggards. Nestle, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Asian Paints were among the gainers.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
I will tell you one thing, to be the Foreign Minister of Modi government is also a great strength, Jaishankar said.
The Reserve Bank is planning to extend wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for transactions for interbank borrowing or call money market, sources said on Tuesday. The pilot in the wholesale segment, known as the Digital Rupee -Wholesale (e-W), was launched on November 1, 2022, with the use case being limited to the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities. "RBI is now planning to go into the interbank borrowing market.
There will be different ways of returning the money, depending on the profile of the depositors and the amount, predicts Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Information technology (IT) companies have been on the road to revival in the past one year. From being the worst-hit sector in 2022 with a loss of 26 per cent, the Nifty IT index closed 2023 with gains of 24 per cent. So far in 2024, the index is up around 7 per cent against the nearly flat Nifty 50 benchmark index. The IT index has been on a continuous decline in the last three sessions.
The total amount of fraud reported by banks showed a drop in 2020-21 - for the first time in eight years - though there is an emerging trend of private sector banks reporting a larger number of frauds related to card and internet banking. According to the latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India, commercial banks reported Rs 1.38 trillion of frauds in 2020-21, as compared to Rs 1.85 trillion in the previous year. The first half of the current fiscal year saw banks reporting frauds worth Rs 36,342 crore.
'Mumbai main branch (SBI headquarter) has all the data ready-made. It doesn't take even an hour to out the data from the system.'
To check digital frauds, the government has disconnected 70 lakh mobile numbers so far involved in cybercrime or financial frauds, Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi said on Tuesday. Emerging from a meeting to discuss issues related to financial cyber security and increasing digital payment fraud, Joshi, who chaired the meeting, said banks have been asked to strengthen the system and processes in this regard. More such meetings would take place, he said, adding the next meeting is scheduled in January.
A remarkable story which helped in transforming a bureaucratic organization, to a customer centric organization. This experience may inspire several government / private organizations to modify or adopt digitisation to transform their business, notes Professor N Ravichandran (retd).
'The Indian private sector knows how to build and run educational organisations, what is needed is a large dose of removal of restrictions.' 'Government restrictions hold back universities in India from launching medical schools,' argue Ajay Shah and Vijay Kelkar.
Nineteen per cent of global fund managers remain bullish on India, suggests the latest BofA Asia Fund Manager Survey (FMS). A total of 249 panelists with $656 billion worth of assets under management (AUM) participated in the survey between February 2 and 8, BofA said. Two hundred and nine participants with $568 billion AUM responded to the global FMS questions, while 145 participants with $331 billion in AUM responded to the regional fund manager survey (FMS) questions, BofA said.
While HDFC Bank has vowed to recoup its lost market share in the credit card segment in three to four quarters by aggressively sourcing new cards, brokerages believe it is a little hard to come by, given how competitive the landscape has become, with other players in the market becoming equally aggressive to gain market share. Kotak Institutional Equities in its report on Monday said, "We would like to believe that the recovery in market share is likely to be gradual, if any. "All the key players, including Axis Bank, are now willing to expand their credit card portfolios as they have tested quite well against Covid-19."
'We emphasise the importance of not basing investment decisions solely on electoral outcomes.' 'Instead, focusing on investing in high-quality businesses capable of prospering regardless of the political landscape is paramount.'
Ramoji Rao lived as the interface between business and politics and was an active participant in both for most of his remarkable life.
'Companies like Tesla and others have been given a long rope in India.'
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