'The snakes and ladders game will continue till the consolidation process is complete simply because we don't know how bad the scene is, with some of the banks being merged,' says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Standard Chartered said it will stop providing financing to parts of the diamond and jewellery industries as part of a review of its exposure to risky sectors.
What connects P S Jayakumar of Bank of Baroda, V Vaidyanathan of Capital First Ltd and Chandra Shekhar Ghosh of Bandhan?
With general elections on the horizon, the government's privatisation bandwagon has almost but stalled as a government wary of being accused of selling family silver opts for minority stake sales on stock exchanges over outright privatisation. The result -- the divestment target for current fiscal year is again likely to be missed. Big ticket privatisation plans such as that of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and CONCOR are already on the backburner and analysts feel meaningful privatisation can happen only after April/May general elections.
Capital markets regulator Sebi has kept in 'abeyance' the proposed initial share sale of securities depository NSDL. However, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) did not clarify further. The National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) filed its preliminary papers with the capital markets regulator on July 7.
Of the total 53,334 cases of frauds reported during 2008-09 and 2018-19 fiscal years, involving a whopping Rs 2.05 lakh crore, a highest of 6,811 cases were reported by the ICICI Bank.
Merely bringing down the government stake below 51% may not find any taker for the PSBs. The government must bring down its holding to at least 26%, recommends Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Nationalisation has served its purpose. It's time to move ahead, keeping majority ownership of the government in a few banks to serve the people, argues Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
A consortium of Indian banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) returned to the High Court in London for a bankruptcy application hearing against liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, as they pursue the recovery of debt from loans paid out to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines. At a virtual hearing before Chief Insolvencies and Companies Court (ICC) Judge Michael Briggs on Friday, both sides deposed retired Indian Supreme Court justices as expert witnesses on Indian law in support of their arguments for and against a bankruptcy order against Mallya in the UK. While the banks argued a right to waive their security over the Indian assets involved in the case in order to recover their debt in the UK, lawyers for the 65-year-old businessman argued that the funds in question involved public money held by state-owned banks in India which precluded them from such a security waiver.
Mahindra Satyam had filed a lawsuit in a New York court against Upaid, seeking to make it solely responsible for any tax liability arising from an out-of-court settlement reached by them.
The Centre could further moderate its divestment target for 2024-25 (FY25), as it does not expect large receipts from asset sales - except some ongoing strategic ones, including IDBI Bank, which could spill over into next financial year. Also, it may drastically reduce its FY24 divestment target of Rs 51,000 crore. "We are still evaluating the Budget estimates for FY25. "New big-ticket asset sales are unlikely.
We must stop stigmatising business failures. Particularly when startups are mushrooming all around, the financial system, backed by the RBI and the government, can explore ways of extending support to restart the journey of a failed entrepreneur by finance as well as counselling, recommends Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
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.
At a hearing before Master David Cook at the Queen's Bench Division of the court, Mallya's legal team sought a dismissal of the interim order.
The consortium led by SBI has also initiated the process of recovery.
The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Thursday allowed the merger of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Culver Max Entertainment (earlier known as Sony Pictures Networks India). This order by the Mumbai bench, headed by H V Subba Rao and Madhu Sinha, will pave the way for the creation of a $10-billion media company, the biggest in the country. The tribunal also dismissed all objections regarding the merger.
The charge sheet has now paved way for the CBI to approach authorities in the UK for deportation of Mallya.
Air India sale will give a boost to India's privatisation drive, the Economic Survey said on Monday, as it suggested redefining the public sector role in business enterprises to encourage private participation in all sectors. The government earlier this month handed over ownership rights in national carrier Air India to Tata Group for Rs 18,000 crore. The amount includes the takeover of the debt burden of Rs 15,300 crore and another Rs 2,700 crore in cash.
Earlier, proceeds from disinvestment were shown separately as part of the miscellaneous receipts in the Capital Receipts Budget.
Kingfisher Airlines owed Indian banks Rs 7,000 crore as of January.
As a multi-disciplinary organisation, SFIO probes cases of financial frauds that are referred to it by Corporate Affairs Ministry
India's five leading wilful defaulters are Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery Ltd and associate Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds, Zoom Developers, Kingfisher Airlines, Beta Naphthol and Raza Textiles
S&P Global Ratings on Monday expressed scepticism over allowing corporate ownership in banks given India's weak corporate governance amid large corporate defaults over the past few years. It also said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will face challenges in supervising non-financial sector entities at a time when the health of financial sector is weak. Last week, a RBI panel had proposed that large corporate may be permitted to promote banks, as well as raising the cap on promoters' stake in private sector banks to 26 per cent, from15 per cent at present.
Bad debt rules are steps in right direction.
Analysts were expecting the government to propose higher capital infusion for banks.
The board of directors would meet on September 21 to discuss the details of the scheme, a bank source told PTI in Mumbai.
It may be a 'no-go' for banking licences to large industrial houses.
Changes have been made in several indices including Nifty 500, Nifty 200, Nifty 100, Nifty Midcap 150, Nifty Smallcap 250 and host of sectoral indices including FMCG, IT, media, pharma, commodities and services sector.
The banks also received a warning from the rating agency Care, in February 2016, after Firestar's financials deteriorated.
With the merger between HDFC Bank and HDFC Ltd complete, analysts said the next key monitorable for the Street would be successful resolution of merger-related hiccups, including employee-related churn and roll out of complete banking services across branches. At the bourses, they expect the stock to perform in-line with the benchmark indices in the near-term. "There's usually an initial period of consolidation after a merger as the entities work towards integration.
If there were an Olympics for bank frauds in India, Rishi Agarwal, founder and former chairman of ABG Shipyard Ltd, a nephew of the Ruia brothers of the Essar group, would bag the gold, pushing Nirav Modi to his right, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The rally in the equity markets in the second half of 2023 has led to a sharp surge in the cutoff for stocks to qualify as largecaps and midcaps. On the latest list put out by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi), the smallest largecap stock now has a market capitalisation (m-cap) of Rs 67,000 crore, 35 per cent higher than in July 2023. In the case of midcaps, the cutoff has surged 26 per cent to Rs 22,000 crore.
Mallya is separately fighting extradition to India on fraud and money laundering charges worth an estimated Rs 9,000 crore
The Industrial Development Bank of India has sold 7.56 crore shares (Rs 10 each) of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd to ONGC Ltd for about Rs 81.5 crore (Rs 815 million).
'We can't have the best of both worlds -- large, efficient, world class government-owned banks, doing social banking and making profits. 'Why not set them free from the shackles of such obligations and run them as business units?' says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
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