Gold prices slumped for the second straight session by Rs 1,150 to Rs 78,350 per 10 grams in the national capital on Monday on frantic selling by stockists and retailers, the All India Sarafa Association said. The precious metal of 99.9 per cent purity closed at Rs 79,500 per 10 grams on Friday.
Quarterly earnings from corporates, global trends, and trading activity of foreign investors will guide market sentiment this week, analysts said, adding that benchmark indices may face volatile trends. "The upcoming release of Q2 results will be closely watched, providing insights into corporate performance. "Meanwhile, the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran introduce a significant geopolitical risk, potentially leading to increased oil prices and market volatility.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) latest order on unsecured loans is set to hit the banking sector's growth in the near-term, cautioned analysts, as they see banks slowing down on aggressive retail lending. Besides, cost of funds for non-banking finance companies (NBFC) is expected to inch up as banks will pass on higher capital charge to NBFCs. "We believe the fallout of the RBI action will be mainly on growth, given the rising dependence on unsecured retail loans and lending to NBFCs for growth.
A merchant using the bank's merchant App, QR code, PoS or Payment gateways, across all segments, including electronics, apparel, grocery, stand to win assured cashback and prizes on volume build-up, EMI or digital transactions.
Looking to regain lost ground in the credit cards segment, HDFC Bank on Monday announced a tie-up with leading payments company Paytm to start selling co-branded plastics before the onset of the festive season. The credit cards will be powered by Visa and will include offerings targeted at millennials, business owners and merchants, an official statement said. Paytm has a reach of over 330 million consumers and 21 million merchants, while HDFC Bank has over 5 million debit, credit and prepaid cards, and serves 2 million merchants through its offerings.
Net NPAs increased to Rs 36,260 crore in the December quarter from Rs 34,843 crore in September and Rs 33,116 crore in December 2023, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank on Tuesday announced a 0.35 per cent hike in lending rate. The hike, which comes a day ahead of the RBI's scheduled policy review, is the second such move from the lender in as many months, taking the cumulative hike to up to 0.60 per cent. The RBI had surprised all with a 0.40 per cent hike in key interest rates on May 4 to tame the inflation situation and is widely expected to follow up with further tightening of the policy on Wednesday.
Fuelled by the $57.8-billion merger of HDFC twins (HDFC Ltd and HDFC Bank), M&A (merger and acquisition) transactions in India touched a record high of $124.2 billion in the first half of 2022-23. Bankers said with several transactions, including the government's stake sale in IDBI Bank and Hindustan Zinc in the pipeline, the ongoing financial year will end up as the best year for M&A activity in the country. Apart from the HDFC transaction, the $6.5-billion acquisition of Holcim stake by the Adani family and L&T's $3.2-billion acquisition of Mindtree added to the record transactions in the first half of FY23.
One97 Communications (OCL), the company that operates brand Paytm, received a nod from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to onboard new Unified Payments Interface (UPI) users. This comes nearly nine months after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) placed an embargo on OCL to add new customers.
Investors' wealth on Monday surged Rs 4.21 lakh crore as markets bounced back after five days of fall. The BSE Sensex jumped 602.75 points or 0.76 per cent to settle at 80,005.04. During the day, it surged 1,137.52 points or 1.43 per cent to 80,539.81.
The volume of new fund offerings (NFOs) in 2025 will fluctuate based on market conditions. However, innovation is expected to continue unabated. With an increasing number of fund houses aiming to establish a presence in the 'factor' investing space and changes in fund-of-fund taxation providing more opportunities, several industry-first offerings are anticipated.
With the banking regulator lifting restrictions on HDFC Bank's digital initiatives, the largest private sector lender is now girding up to launch a clutch of customer-facing applications (apps), which will act as stepping stones in its journey to morph into a technology (tech)-led bank from a conventional one. Following repeated outages in its digital offerings, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had barred HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards in December 2020 and prevented it from going ahead with its digital launches. The embargo on issuing credit cards was lifted in August 2021 and the ban on digital launches was lifted last week.
Mortgage lender HDFC on Wednesday said it has approved the highest ever retail home loans of over Rs 2 lakh crore in 2021-22. The demand for these loans was from across the country, HDFC said in a statement. HDFC managing director Renu Sud Karnad said, "In over four and half decades, I have not seen a better time for the housing sector than now due to lower interest rates, stable property prices, government's thrust on affordable housing, improved affordability, favourable demographics, increasing urbanisation and rising aspirations." The residential real estate segment will continue to see strong traction going forward, as the demand for housing is not just pent up demand but is a structural one, she said.
The April-June quarter (Q1) of the current financial year (FY25) may be soft for banks with loan growth moderation, net interest margin (NIM) pressures, and higher staff and credit costs inching up, according to analysts. Credit growth could ease due to the lagged impact of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tightening and deposit growth has weakened, and the current account and savings account (CASA) ratio has declined 10-370 basis points (bps) quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) for many banks.
The financial numbers for 2023-24 (FY24) of the four pure-play listed asset management companies (AMCs) have enthused the Street. All firms listed robust growth in net profit and revenue both during the January-March quarter (Q4) of FY24, as well as in full FY24. The strong performance comes amid a positive growth environment for the sector, led by tailwinds such as sharp growth in assets under management (AUM) and robust performance in equity offerings.
Brokerages expect Nifty50 companies to have cumulatively witnessed strong double-digit growth in their earnings in the first quarter of FY24 (Q1FY24). This growth in the combined earnings is expected to have been driven by banks, automakers, and oil & gas companies. Other sectors may report muted profit growth.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is India's most-valuable brand in 2022 replacing HDFC Bank, which held the number one spot since 2014, according to Kantar BrandZ report on India's most-valuable brands. TCS was able to grab the top slot due to rising global demand for automation and digital transformation, following the pandemic. Indian brands have bounced back from the pandemic to increase their brand value by 35 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2020.
Why is Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, not worried about the competition?
India's financial sector is dominated by large government-owned and private-sector banks.
Zomato emerged as the biggest gainer, followed by Reliance, Nestle, Asian Paints and Power Grid.
Insurance companies reported nearly 23 per cent growth in first year premium in the first quarter of financial year 2024-25, when compared to the same period last year, with market leader LIC leading the charge with 28 per cent growth. According to the data released by the Life Insurance Council, the new business premium (NBP) increased by 22.91 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to ~89,726.7 crore in Q1FY25 from ~73,004.87 crore in Q1 FY24, reflecting a robust demand for insurance policies in the country.
If the entire amount of Rs 24,000 crore is raised, then it would be the biggest fundraising exercise by any Indian company ever.
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Dr Nagesh Kumar, one of the three new MPC members, wanted the MPC to reduce the repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25%.
Credit-to-deposit (CD) ratio of major public sector and private sector banks during the October-December quarter of FY24 inched up as compared to the previous quarter though government-owned lenders reported a lower rate than their private peers. CD ratio is the ratio of the funds that banks lend as compared to the funds raised in the form of deposits. The CD ratio of top public sector banks (PSBs) - State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda and Canara Bank - was lower than their private counterparts.
ITC, State Bank of India, HCL Technologies and IndusInd Bank were the other big laggards. NTPC, UltraTech Cement, HDFC Bank and Mahindra & Mahindra were among the gainers.
The post-Covid pandemic boom in corporate revenues appeared to have faded away in 2023-24. Yet, companies have reported a sharp recovery in their profits in FY24, driven by high margins. Their combined net sales, including gross interest income for lenders, rose by a modest 4.8 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in FY24.
Public-sector banks, including Canara Bank and Bank of India, are tapping the infrastructure bond market. Canara Bank on Tuesday raised Rs 10,000 crore at a coupon rate of 7.40 per cent through 10-year infrastructure bonds. This comes after SBI on July 10 raised Rs 10,000 crore also through infrastructure bonds with a 15-year tenor at a coupon rate of 7.36 per cent.
Even as the high inflation figure for October has ruled out any possibility of a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) monetary policy committee (MPC) in December, a rate cut in February also looks uncertain due to global uncertainties. Economists told Business Standard that unless domestic growth slows markedly, the outlook on rate cut remains unclear. India's headline inflation touched a 14-month high of 6.2 per cent in October, breaching the MPC's upper tolerance band of 6 per cent.
The three day MPC meeting began on Monday and the decision will be announced on Wednesday by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.
Ask rediffGURU and PF and MF expert Janak Patel your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
India's corporate sector is likely to report a slowdown in revenue growth and earnings for the July-September 2023 period (Q2FY24), according to earnings estimates by brokerages, after the country's top listed companies posted higher than expected profits for the first quarter. The combined net profit of Nifty50 companies, based on brokerage estimates, is expected to have grown by 19.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 1.75 trillion in Q2FY24 - a sharp deceleration from 37.6 per cent Y-o-Y growth in the combined earnings of index companies in the April-June 2023 period. According to estimates, the combined earnings in the second quarter would be down 8.8 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) basis and the lowest in the past three quarters.
Other top losers in the Sensex pack included Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, TCS, HCL Tech, Tata Steel, SBI, IndusInd Bank and Hero MotoCorp, declining up to 3.28 per cent.
Ask rediffGURU and PF expert Nitin Narkhede your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
Ask rediffGURU and PF expert Nitin Narkhede your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
rediffGURU Kirtan A Shah answers your personal finance queries.
Among the 30 Sensex companies, Mahindra & Mahindra, Power Grid, Sun Pharma, Nestle, UltraTech Cement, NTPC, ITC, ICICI Bank, Titan, Bajaj Finserv, Bharti Airtel, and HDFC Bank were among the biggest gainers. IndusInd Bank, Adani Ports, Tata Steel, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank and Bajaj Finance were among the laggards.
IT services company's CEO outlined an ambitious three-year roadmap to accelerate revenue growth and lift margins.
Private banks' net profit grew 26.3 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 48,982 crore in the first quarter ended June 2024 (Q1FY25) owing to healthy growth in credit and other income. The gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) increased with the end of dispensation granted during the pandemic, according to the data compiled by BS Research Bureau for listed 18 private banks.
In May, MFs were the net sellers in several PSUs, as they deployed Rs 47,600 crore in equities during the month.
