Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the government has no business to be in business and his administration is committed to privatising all PSUs barring the bare minimum in four strategic sectors. "It is government's duty to support enterprises and businesses. But it is not essential that it should own and run enterprises," he said. Modi also said the Centre's policy is to either monetise or modernise public sector enterprises, with the intent that the government has "no business to be in business".
Two issues dog the sale of the national carrier. One is the $2 billion bank guarantee the winning bidder will need to furnish. The other is the nearly 5000 lawsuits filed against Air India, many of them overseas. Anjuli Bhargava reports.
Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of ride-hailing firm Ola who disrupted the electric scooters market in the country, is planning to launch an electric sports car in 2024. The plan will put it in competition with Indian players, such as the Tata group and Mahindra & Mahindra, and global giants like Tesla and Hyundai. Aggarwal, recently, took a group of reporters to the firm's design studio at the Ola campus in Bengaluru where his teams are working on several EVs, including scooters, motorcycles, sedans, and SUVs - and even robotaxis.
Shridhar Madhav Patankar, the brother of Thackeray's wife Rashmi, "owns and controls" Shree Saibaba Grihanirmiti Private Limited, it said.
The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella body of nine unions, on Tuesday gave a call for a two-day strike from March 15 to protest against the proposed privatisation of two state-owned lenders. In the Union Budget presented last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the privatisation of two Public Sector Banks (PSBs) as part of its disinvestment plan. The government has already privatised IDBI Bank by selling its majority stake in the lender to LIC in 2019 and merged 14 public sector banks in the last four years.
In 2019, the growth in sales of the Maggi brand of products surpassed the pre-ban level of 2014, in terms of both volume and value. While, Nestle raised prices of Maggi products by an average 3.1 per cent, its volume rose by 9.6 per cent year-on-year.
In a bid to resurrect Air India privatisation, the government is planning to give flexibility to potential investors to decide on the humongous debt with the national carrier, a top official has said. The flexibility to potential investors on the quantum of the Rs 60,074 crore debt that they want to absorb will replace the current condition of the buyer taking over more than a third of the debt and transferring the rest to a special purpose vehicle, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said.
'We were taking the Starbucks experience from the store to the home.'
A consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI) has agreed to provide loans to Tata Group for the smooth operations of loss-making Air India. Tata Group, which won the bid to acquire the national carrier along with Air India Express and 50 per cent stake in AISATS in October last year, is expected to formally takeover the airline on Thursday. Sources said the SBI-led consortium has agreed to grant both term loans and working capital loans depending on the airline's requirements. All large lenders, including Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Union Bank of India, are part of the consortium, they added.
India's Rs 4.5-trillion fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector was one of the first to bounce back from the lockdown induced blues, reporting a year-on-year (YoY) growth in the October-December quarter last year. That said, the overall consumption figures continue to remain depressed. The FMCG market, which includes daily consumables like branded atta, hand sanitizers, edible oils, shampoos, razors, and so on, recorded 7.3 per cent value growth during the period, while the smartphone market grew by 21 per cent.
The candidates will be selected through a National Qualifier Test. The top 1,000 will be offered a much higher salary -- almost double of that being offered to peers.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) turned net buyers in October after being net sellers in the previous month. In October, FPIs bought shares worth nearly Rs 8,430 crore ($1 billion) against net selling of Rs 13,405 crore ($1.6 billion) in September. Positive flows during three of the previous four months have pushed the domestic markets towards fresh all-time highs. At present, the Sensex and Nifty are less than 2 per cent shy of breaching record highs logged in October 2021. A rally in equity markets in the US and Europe is in hopes that the Federal Reserve may go soft on rate hikes after its November meeting.
China's debt is dangerously high at close to three times its GDP, with the ratio having nearly doubled in recent years, observes T N Ninan.
Air India owns 32 aircraft, and has 37 aircraft on finance lease; Air India Express owns 17 aircraft on finance lease. The aircraft-related debt of Air India is Rs 16,000 crore; it's Rs 1,100 crore for Air India Express.
Rajiv Suri's resignation is effective August 25, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Suri quit for personal reasons and would pursue a career outside India, it added.
Future Retail's independent directors had last week asked Amazon if it was willing to give a long-term loan to avoid default on repayment of Rs 3,500 crore loan due on January 29. Amazon replied to that saying it was willing to financially assist Future Retail through the Samara Capital deal but the retailer must shelve Rs 24,713 crore deal with the Reliance group.
Zomato's mega initial public offering (IPO) ended with a bumper 38 times oversubscription on Friday as institutional investors poured money to get a pie of the hottest online food delivery platform. Zomato got bids for 2,751.25 crore shares against 71.92 crore shares on offer, stock exchange data showed. The IPO is India's biggest since March 2020. Institutional investors, who shied away in the first two days of the IPO, bid several times over the number of shares reserved for them.
The impact for all electric two-wheelers, which are imported mostly from China, is that it will lead to price escalation that will be passed onto customers.
Coming Wednesday, Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman will present the 2023 Union Budget - the last full Budget ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. While India exited 2022 as a relatively bright spot in the global economy, the FM will endeavour to present a Budget that insulates India's economy against global headwinds and recession in advanced economies, while sticking to the path of fiscal consolidation. In this, she is being helped by her core team of trusted advisors.
The move will boost the government's revenue at a time when Delhi's economy is struggling in view of the Covid-induced lockdown that has been in place since April 19.
In a major blow to Nirav Modi, a bankruptcy court in the US has rejected a petition of the fugitive diamond merchant and two of his associates, seeking dismissal of fraud allegations against them by the trustee of three companies they previously owned indirectly.
The Delhi high court on Thursday dismissed BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's plea seeking to set aside the Air India divestment process on the allegation that the methodology adopted by the government in the valuation of the national carrier was "arbitrary, illegal and against public interest". The order was passed by a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh. The court said a detailed order will be uploaded. "Dr. Subramanian Swamy, sir we are dismissing this matter...," the bench said.
This year, festive sales are expected to push up the annual gross merchandise value of e-commerce companies to around $38 billion, a 40 per cent growth over the previous year.
Union Minister of Commerce and Textiles Piyush Goyal has stirred up a hornet's nest by taking on India Inc, specifically the Tata group, which is among the companies that lobbied against the Modi government's pro-consumer draft e-commerce policies. While Goyal's comments, made at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) event, were streamed live on YouTube, the industry lobbying body later edited the video and subsequently withdrew the entire speech. Goyal had said the Tata group and other Indian companies often lobbied for their interest, while ignoring national interest.
Nothing has ever been done to make bank officers accountable, except for the rare actions when there is a public controversy, argues Debashis Basu.
The promoters who own the Leela brand will also be transferring the label to Brookfield for all hospitality businesses.
Billionaire Gautam Adani's group is said to be planning a surprise entry into the race to acquire telecom spectrum, which will pitch it directly against Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio and telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel, sources said. Applications for participating in the July 26 auction of airwaves, including those capable of providing fifth-generation or 5G telecom services such as ultra-high-speed internet connectivity, closed on Friday with at least four applications. Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea -- the three private players in the telecom sector -- applied, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Whether it is DLF in the National Capital Region, or Godrej Properties and Oberoi Realty in Mumbai or Sunteck Realty, Prestige Estates and Sobha Realty in Bengaluru, most top players have launched or lined up a slew of new project launches during this season.
The levy of retrospective tax on the UK's Cairn Energy Plc is a tale of bizarre twists and turns that saw its attached shares being sold in May 2018 amid the passing of the baton from a full-time finance minister to interim one and the talks at the highest level to resolve the dispute, to claims that levy of back taxes was a result of an investigation into Panama Papers leak. The government late last month refunded about Rs 7,900 crore it had collected from selling residual shares of the British firm in its erstwhile India unit, seizing dividend and withholding tax refunds, to settle an eight-year-old dispute that had tarred the country's reputation as an investment destination. But, this did not come about easily. For seven years, the establishment vehemently justified in courts and outside seeking of Rs 10,247 crore in back taxes plus interest and penalty from a firm that gave India its biggest onshore oil discovery.
Banking sources said the debt recast is actually 'Plan B' to help the nation's largest retailer stay afloat.
Brookfield Asset Management will pay around Rs 29,000 per square foot for the 170,000 square feet of space in Jet Airways' two-floor office in Bandra Kurla Complex.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation's largest oil firm, has renewed a deal to buy up to 2 million tonnes of crude oil in 2022 from Russia's Rosneft, the Russian oil producer said. IOC had in February 2020 signed a deal with Rosneft Oil Company to import up to 2 million tonnes of oil via the port of Novorossiysk. In 2021, the deal envisaged supply of up to 1.7 million tonnes of crude oil but IOC bought just on parcel or shipload as the cost of transporting the oil made it uneconomical, when compared to alternatives. For 2022, the deal is for the supply of up to 2 million tonnes of oil from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The government will transfer about Rs 16,000 crore of unpaid fuel bills and other pending dues that Air India owes to suppliers, to a special purpose vehicle before handing over the loss-making airline to the Tata Group, a senior official said. Air India Assets Holding Ltd (AIAHL), which will hold non-core assets of Air India such as land and building, will also be saddled with 75 per cent of the airline's debt that the Tata Group is not taking over. Besides the debt, the excess liability going to AIAHL comprises unpaid fuel bills to oil companies, airport operators and vendors, said Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Secretary to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management - the department running the privatisation programme of the government.
The challenges before the coming Budget are more daunting than those in 2021, reveals A K Bhattacharya.
With the O2C business outlook on the mend, the Street is also looking forward to news on RIL's proposal to sell up to 20 per cent of the O2C business to a strategic investor like Saudi Aramco.
Reflective of the conglomerate's ambition to turn into a consumer-driven business, most of the 33 acquisitions in the last financial year were for its digital, retail, or related verticals.
Industry observers were anticipating further divestment in the two public sector companies. The government has already divested about 13 per cent of its stake in aluminum producer Nalco and 0.41 per cent in the copper firm Hindustan Copper. Both, the companies are listed on the bourses.
RInfra, which is sitting on a debt of over Rs 6,000 crore, has been working towards monetising its assets to reduce debt.
From March 3, investors in India will be able to trade in select US stocks through the NSE International Exchange (NSE IFSC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Investors can invest in NSE IFSC receipts on US stocks, which will be in the form of unsponsored depository receipts (DRs). For a start, this will include DRs of 50 US stocks such as Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, P&G, Coca-Cola, and Exxon Mobil. Indian retail investors will be able to transact on the NSE IFSC platform under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) limits prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which currently stand at $250,000 per year.
With real estate valuations falling and other deals coming unstuck, the current management's improved target faces significant challenges.
