Looking under the hood, I see India on the terrible, but commonplace, road to prosperity failure, warns Rathin Roy.
Bharti Global, the international investment arm of Bharti Enterprises, has decided to buy 24.5 per cent equity in BT Group - a move that will make the Indian conglomerate the biggest shareholder in the UK's second-largest telecom company both in terms of market value and subscriber count. The shares are being purchased from billionaire Patrick Drahi's Altice UK through a combination of cash and debt .
His political career began with his involvement in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and he later became a member of the Shiv Sena.
The government will come out with a credit guarantee scheme for MSMEs to facilitate term loans without collateral or third party guarantee, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday. Presenting her seventh straight Union Budget, she also said that public sector banks to build in-house capability for credit assessment of MSMEs.
US short-seller Hindenburg Research had shared an advance copy of its damning report against Adani group with New York-based hedge fund manager Mark Kingdon about two months before publishing it and profited from a deal to share spoils from share price movement, according to market regulator Sebi. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), in its 46-page show cause notice to Hindenburg, detailed how the US short seller, the New York hedge fund and a broker tied to Kotak Mahindra Bank benefited from the over USD 150 billion routs in the market value of Adani group's 10 listed firms post-publication of the report.
The need for a manufacturing policy, reining in food inflation and raising investment in the country were among key suggestions given by economists who met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior ministry officials in the first round of pre-Budget consultations on Friday.
"Less than two week back, we faced a set of allegations from the US about compliance practices. This is not the first time we have faced such challenges. What I can tell you is that every attack makes us stronger," he said addressing the 51st Gems and Jewellery Award in Jaipur.
India SME Forum, an organisation for small and medium businesses, has called for creating a dedicated fund of Rs 5000 crore for the export capacity development, promotion, and marketing of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in its Budget recommendation. The forum for MSMEs with over 98,000 members said that to enhance India's global competitiveness and increase its market share in global exports, it was "crucial to increase the number of active exporters and enable at least 3-4 lakh first-time micro, small, and medium exporters while supporting them in promoting Indian products globally."
Punit Goenka, the former director of Zee Entertainment Enterprises, is not the only one who lost his board seat due to shareholders' activism last fortnight. In recent past, institutional shareholders of several companies, including Nestle and Wipro, have pushed back against board proposals by taking an aggressive stance while voting.
The National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) will invite public comments on the revised International Standard on Auditing 600 (ISA 600) proposed to be adopted by publicly listed companies and non-public-sector banks, sources close to the development told Business Standard. The decision to take this "graded approach" for the adoption of the ISA, which is meant to rein in auditors often found hiding behind the audit reports signed off by subsidiary companies, was taken at a meeting of various financial sector regulators at NFRA's board meeting on Monday (August 26). The idea behind upgrading the Standards of Audit 600 currently followed by Indian auditors to ISA 600 is to plug current gaps, which have led to major audit lapses in the recent past.
Growth in corporate profits needs to be commensurate with wages to boost the economy, Economic Survey 2024-25 said, noting that sharp disparities between the two pose risk to the economy by curbing demand. The document tabled in Parliament on Friday noted that while the labour share of GVA (gross value added) shows a slight uptick, the disproportionate rise in corporate profitsredominantly among large firmsaises concerns about income inequality.
India is among the fastest-growing markets for Google in the cloud services segment, a senior executive has said, adding that the tech giant is looking to partner companies in their business transformation through its offerings. Google Cloud India is seeing an "increased adoption" of its offerings across segments from the public sector to small and medium businesses and from startups and digital-native companies, Google Cloud India vice president and country managing director Bikram Singh Bedi told PTI.
Do we have enough trained oncologists and medical professionals in India to man these over 4,500 beds in the public sector?
Travel is about making memories, experiencing the unknown, and engaging in new experiences -- not worrying about fluctuating exchange rates or hidden expenditures. With a little planning and a proactive approach to handling your foreign exchange, you can reduce financial stress and enjoy your trip, suggests Pavan Kavad.
Enterprising women business correspondents, known as BC Sakhis, have facilitated transactions worth Rs 27,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh, earning Rs 75 crore in commission over the past four and a half years. BC Sakhis, appointed under the nationwide women empowerment programme, are members of self-help groups (SHGs) who are trained and certified to provide banking and financial services in rural areas.
'Your relationship with your child is changing every single day, ditto your relationship with your parents.'
Here stood a man who embodied the legacy of whatever Brand Tata stood for, embellished it, and departed into the long night, leaving the brand legacy for others to further enrich, notes R Gopalakrishnan.
Activist short-seller Nathan Anderson, known for his high-profile campaigns against the likes of Adani Group, said he is closing his firm, Hindenburg Research, not because of any threat -- legal or otherwise -- and that he stands by all its reports.
Billionaire Gautam Adani's group on Saturday clarified on reports of Kenya cancelling more than $2.5 billion in deals after US indictment on bribery charges, saying it had not entered into any binding agreement to operate Kenya's main airport. On the pact it had signed last month to build and operate key electricity transmission lines in Kenya for 30 years, the group said the project did not fall within the ambit of Sebi's disclosure regulations, thereby not warranting any disclosure on its cancellation.
'I get enormous pleasure from seeing the uplift of an underprivileged or poor person.' 'I feel elated when I walk on the street and see someone who pushes a handcart talking on a cell phone.' A revealing glimpse from Peter Casey's The Story of Tata: 1968 to 2021.
The ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B) on Wednesday held an inter-ministerial meeting with various departments to discuss issues regarding revenue sharing between Big Tech companies and digital news publishers, according to sources. The meeting - chaired by I&B Secretary Sanjay Jaju - invited senior officials from the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), Competition Commission of India (CCI), ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) and departments of promotion of industry and internal trade, legal affairs and consumer affairs.
'Maharashtra is virtually in a debt trap.'
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Mospi) has started preparations for the eighth Economic Census (EC), which is expected to be formally launched next year, sources told Business Standard, even as the results of the seventh edition are yet to be made public. "Centre has asked states and Union Territories (UTs) to submit requirements for funds and manpower in a bid to start work on the eighth EC. "The states and UTs are required to set up a dedicated unit to conduct the exercise.
At a time when the government is nudging the private sector to ramp up its capital expenditure (capex), the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is poised to kick-start the first-of-its-kind annual survey on the status of private sector capex from next month. "The inaugural edition of the annual exercise will start in October and will be completed by December. "The results will be made public by February next year," said Geeta Singh Rathore, director general, National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), at a data users' conference on Thursday.
Billionaire Gautam Adani-led group's power transmission unit has raised $1 billion through a share sale, the first public equity raise by the conglomerate since a damning Hindenburg report, which wiped away billions in shareholder value. Adani Energy Solutions Ltd raised the funds through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) issue, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. The QIP, which opened on Tuesday, was oversubscribed three times with demand of about Rs 26,000 crore - making it the largest transaction in India's energy space.
The Republican has alleged that the actions of his Democrat rival during her tenure as the US Secretary of State constitutes all of the elements of a criminal enterprise.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has intervened in the matter concerning alleged irregularities by Trafiksol ITS Technologies, which had come out with a Rs 45 crore initial public offering (IPO) last month. In an ex-parte order, the market regulator has said it will undertake a detailed examination into the disclosures made by the small and medium enterprise (SME) company in its draft offer document. BSE had halted the listing of Trafiksol, a software provider for traffic systems, amid complaints around use of the issue proceeds and wrongful disclosures.
Unprecedented bribery charges, farewells, separation, failed union, monumental mergers and record-breaking IPOs, along with a healthy dose of online happenings in the form of spat and lessons in customer care, corporate India saw it all in 2024.
Ask rediffGURU and PF and MF expert Janak Patel your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
India topped the APAC region with 227 transactions in the first eight months of CY24. The US was second with 133 deals while China ranked third with 69 transactions.
The eulogies will pour for Ustad Zakir Hussain. There will be those who recount his genius, his enterprise, his achievements, his grace, and his charm. I have no selfies or autographs to remember him by, but I will never forget his most generous and gracious gift to me -- one day in heaven, among the celestial ensemble of Indian music.
Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) have infused a record Rs 4.6 trillion into Indian equities over the course of Samvat 2080, marking the highest net annual investment in any Samvat to date. This robust domestic inflow has effectively counterbalanced the comparatively subdued investments from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), who contributed a net Rs 90,956 crore within the same timeframe. Against this backdrop, the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex indices are on track to achieve their best performance in three Samvat years, despite recent market corrections.
The share of listed public sector undertakings (PSUs) in the overall market capitalisation has hit a three-year high of 11.4 per cent. This comes on the back of the sharp outperformance of the PSU pack over the past two years. In 2021 and 2022, the BSE PSU index gained 41 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively. Market participants said a combination of factors like value buying and bullishness, particularly in public sector banks (PSBs), were the reason for the improved prospects.
"Wheresoever public money is involved, there should be responsibility, autonomy and a monitoring system," said Department of Public Enterprises Secretary R Bandyopadhyay. As is the case with the CPSEs, the state level public enterprises would also be given targets in conformity with the long-term mission and vision of the enterprises. There are about 1,000 SLPEs which the Centre feels can show improvement if the monitoring mechanism is strengthened & accountability enhanced.
He alleged that the public enterprises department headed by Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Minister Sontosh Mohan Dev has been "pursuing a much narrower agenda, in which governance reform of PSUs does not figure
The Kerala unit of the Congress instantly gets a headache when Shashi Tharoor lets loose one of his observations showering flowers on enemy territory. With every such action triggering controversy within a nervous Congress party, some feel it is high time Tharoor showed a degree of solidarity with the ideals of his party, notes Shyam G Menon.
'My two life mantras are prioritisation and compartmentalisation.' 'Prioritisation allows you to put one thing over the other and compartmentalisation to focus on one priority at a time.'
A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to cancel licences and not to grant new ones to Indian firms exporting arms and other military equipment to Israel, which is fighting a war in Gaza.
'The pricing model will be different. The product will be different.'