In a move that could infuse more liquidity in the markets and make it more dynamic, the Securities and Exchange Board of India on Wednesday extended the tenure of contracts in securities lending and borrowing to 12 months from one month.
Hundreds of junior wrestlers assembled at Jantar Mantar for a symbolic three-hour protest against Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat.
Asks banks to settle for lower margins, boost efficiency.
Steadily marching ahead for almost a decade now on the strength of his unassuming versatility, the 35 year old is ready to showcase his mettle in one of the most challenging roles of his career as India's first Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in Meghna Gulzar's biopic, Sam Bahadur.
'I thought of a suppressed country and a free world.' 'If we travel from one to another, what will that road look like?' 'What colours, music there will be? What kind of people would you see?'
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday said that it was examining the possibility of another round of reduction in its benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR), while adding that it was offering the cheapest rates across loan categories.
India's banks rely on overnight borrowings to fund longer-term lending.
In a double delight, retail inflation eased to a one-year low of 5.72 per cent - staying below the upper tolerance limit for two months in a row, while factory output rose sharply to 7.2 per cent on the back of healthy growth in manufacturing. The retail inflation numbers based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) will provide some room for the Reserve Bank to further moderate the quantum of hike in key interest rate or even press a pause button. The RBI has been on a rate hiking spree since May 2022 in its bid to tame inflation, having raised the repo rate by a cumulative 225 basis points (bps).
SBI and other public sector banks have decided to lend Rs 4,000 crore to Patanjali Ayurved for the acquisition of Ruchi Soya, which was facing bankruptcy proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The money lent by banks will help the PSBs to settle their exposure to Ruchi Soya with a haircut of 65 per cent. Banks led by SBI and others had earlier made claims of over Rs 12,146 crore against Ruchi Soya after the company failed to repay its loans.
Announcing the reduction in interest rate, SBI managing director and group executive (national banking) A Krishna Kumar said the base rate will also remain unchanged at 10 per cent.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday replied to the 'history major central bank governor' taunt faced by him, questioning if Argentinian football legend Lionel Messi is also a post-graduate in history. An interviewer anchoring a fireside chat at a summit organised by Business Standard compared his position to an opponent facing Messi at a football arena in Qatar, to which Das replied with wit. "Don't mind it, but was Messi also a post-graduate in history? Not often, but I am sometimes reminded by people that I am supposed to have done history," Das said.
Country's largest lender, State Bank of India, on Wednesday said it does not plan any hike in its lending or deposit rates in the near-term as the liquidity situation was evolving in the right direction.
If clothes indeed make the man, of the numerous characters SRK has essayed in a career spanning over three decades, he's created a series of iconic looks and sartorial trends.
But the industry's chief executives remain confident of the long-term growth potential of NBFCs in India, given their specialised lending on the asset side, last-mile reach, and a well-capitalised balance sheet. "Over the years, NBFCs have faced many crises.
Ficci's Business Confidence Survey continued to show a robust rise in the second quarter of the ongoing financial year 2010-11 as all three confidence indices -- current conditions index, expectations index and overall business confidence index -- saw an increase in their values.
'Hacking of an ID or an account will have the same impact on a user in a city and one in a small town.' 'Security is like a railroad, you create it to last for every customer.'
Modi said New Delhi has emphasised on dialogue and diplomacy along with restraint to deal with the situation arising out of the Hamas-Israel conflict.
'If 99.99 per cent of these micro borrowers are good at repaying their loans, why can't we look at the SMEs and MSMEs and replicate the same model for them with our stringent risk management system,' Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, chairman and managing director of India's newest private sector bank, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
Indian issuers are borrowing lesser through bonds compared to their global peers. The total value of bond issuances was down 10.1 per cent on a rolling 4-quarter basis in March 2022, compared to a similar period in March 2019, shows an analysis of data from tracker Refinitiv, a London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) business. The four quarters ended March 2019 marked the last full financial year before the pandemic took hold.
While the collapse of a large financial intermediary can wreak havoc on the system because of the interconnectivity, a large business conglomerate too can play spoilsport if the banks have too much exposure to the entity, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
"We will raise Rs 300 crore via bonds of two-, three- and five-year tenures. This will be our maiden bond issuance and is part of our effort to widen funding sources," says Vimal Bhandari, executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), Arka Fincap. The firm, a subsidiary of Kirloskar Oil, is only five years old and small (assets of around Rs 5,000 crore with an "AA" rating), but the response to this float will be closely watched: It would be the first by a non-banking finance company (NBFC) after Mint Road upped the risk weights on bank exposures to them by 25 percentage points. The move by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has caught NBFCs off guard even though the issue had been flagged by Governor Shaktikanta Das with their corner-room occupants (and that of banks) in July and August 2023 - on consumer credit and the dependency on bank borrowings.
Eighteen months after the economy was battered by the Covid-induced lockdown, employment has not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, points out Mahesh Vyas.
Only 21 tonnes of gold have been mobilised in the last eight years under the gold monetisation scheme (GMS) which was announced by the Government of India in November 2015. This could be considered as a failure as the scheme has undergone several changes with a revamped GMS announced in April 2021 to improve collections. This figure was released by the World Gold Council (WGC) on Wednesday in its report titled 'Gold Investment Market and Financialisation, in India gold market series'.
... And what explains the directions of change? asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Close on the heels of a cut in the interest rate on long term domestic deposits, State Bank of India is now contemplating a downward revision in its prime lending rates.
Analysts assert that Vedanta Group's plan to demerge India-listed Vedanta Limited into six listed entities will not resolve the debt problem of its promoter entity, Vedanta Resources (VRL). They suggest that additional asset sales or stake sales by promoters will be necessary to repay the debt. Vedanta is already considering the divestment of its iron-steel division and its copper plant.
The chief of the country's second largest public-sector lender said interest rates should fall as and when inflation eases, but pointed out the need to lower deposit rates first.
RBI's decision to restrict loan against shares by a 'single borrower' at Rs 20 lakh would have significant negative impact on the stock markets.
As liquid tightening measures were likely to be temporary, any change in lending rates would depend on the length of these measures, according to bankers.
India is upset at a reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by a US state department official while defending the immunity it had extended to Saudi Arabian ruler Mohammad bin Sultan, who is facing allegations of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Of the 2,562 customer complaints received between January 2020 and March 2021, a majority relate to illegal apps. At least two dozen suicide cases have been reported, perpetrated by the harassment by loan app operators, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Banks have reduced their base rate or the minimum lending rate in the range of 0.1-0.5 per cent till April 15.
It can be an useful tool in achieving the objective of Pradhan Mantri's Jan Dhan Yojana
Fundraising activity in the debt market is gaining momentum ahead of the festival season. Several non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) are planning to raise at least Rs 5,560 crore in the next two days by issuing bonds, with a greenshoe size of Rs 6,370 crore. Ajay Malglunia, managing director and head of investment grade group at JM Financial, said, "The market likes certainty, the market will gain clarity after the US Federal Reserve's (Fed's) policy.
While analysts assessed One97 Communications (Paytm) Q1FY24 results as in-line with guidance, the market was disappointed and the stock fell by around 5 per cent. Paytm reported a net loss of Rs 360 crore, but revenue grew 39 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 2,340 crore. It was supported by strong growth in gross merchandising value (GMV), higher disbursements and the addition of subscription devices.
India's second largest lender ICICI Bank sees domestic lending rates gradually hardening in line with the international trend.