Re-rating of Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Container Corporation, Shipping Corporation, SAIL, and Hindustan Copper, for which the government has already shown intent to divest its stake, possible now, say analysts.
The new owners of Air India will have to retain all the employees of the national carrier for at least one year post which they can offer a VRS. The gratuity, pension fund and post retirement medical benefits of existing and past employees too would be honoured by the new owner, civil aviation secretary Rajiv Bansal said. Tata Sons has emerged as the winning bidder for Air India with the government accepting its Rs 18,000 crore offer to acquire 100 per cent of the debt-laden state-run carrier.
'India is a top-tier security partner for Australia and we continue to prioritise practical and tangible cooperation that directly contributes to Indo-Pacific stability.'
Rajesh Patel, 57, said he collected nearly 70 tolas of gold ornaments, which would be priceless for the victims' kin, Rs 50,000 and a few US dollars from the scene of the deadly aviation tragedy and handed them over to the police.
The body of a four-year-old boy was discovered in a garbage bin inside a train toilet at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Mumbai. An investigation is underway.
Air India, under its new Tata management, has taken a Rs 60,800 crore ($8 billion) cover by paying Rs 266 crore premium to a clutch of insurance companies, including Tata AIG General Insurance. The airline managed to get a better deal as it valued its fleet lower by almost $2 billion. The new management held extensive negotiations - both in India and London, to get a good deal considering the rising premiums due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
The government has initiated the process for inviting financial bids for the sale of national carrier Air India and the deal is likely to conclude by September, sources said. Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group was among the "multiple" entities that had put in preliminary bids for buying loss-making Air India in December last year. The sources said that after analysing the preliminary bids, eligible bidders were given access to the Virtual Data Room (VDR) of Air India, following which investors' queries were answered.
Tata Sons has emerged as the top bidder for the takeover of debt-laden State-run airline Air India but the bid is yet to be approved by a group of ministers headed by Home Minister Amit Shah, sources said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, US President Donald Trump, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney were among scores of world leaders who offered condolences to the people of India in wake of the tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday.
"Heartbroken by the loss of Shri @RNTata2000 Ji, whose visionary leadership not only transformed India's industry but also played a pivotal role in shaping our aviation sector," Naidu said in a post on X.
Executives from India's leading airlines are conducting internal meetings to devise alternative routes for their international flights that currently pass through Pakistani airspace.
Ernst & Young LLP India has been appointed as transaction adviser for the strategic divestment process.
The government will start working on selling the ground-handling arm of erstwhile national carrier Air India and the Expression of Interest (EoI) is expected in the next fiscal, an official said. "We already have the Cabinet approval for selling the subsidiaries of Air India. "So we will come out with an EoI inviting bids for one of the ground-handling arms in the next fiscal," an official told PTI.
The central government has agreed in-principle to Air India employees' main demands. It fears an industrial dissension now could impede the process of privatisation. It has agreed to bear the cost of liquidation loss on account of transfer to the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) from company-owned trusts, inclusion of employees in the central government health scheme (CGHS), and encashment of leaves. The template of the Air India process will be followed for other public sector undertakings up for privatisation at a later date.
The home ministry has given security clearance to Air India CEO-designate Campbell Wilson, paving the way for him to take charge of the airline, according to a senior official. The appointment of Wilson as the chief executive officer and managing director of Air India was announced by Tata Sons on May 12. Tata Sons took over the loss-making carrier on January 27.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh says India achieved all objectives of Operation Sindoor, emphasizing that escalating the situation to war with Pakistan was not the aim. He highlighted India's fight against cross-border terrorism and the successful exposure of Pakistan's air defense system.
According to officials, more clarity might be required with regard to foreign fund managers in the context of Air India divestment.
In the 18 months that Arvind Jadhav has been the chairman of state-owned Air India, he has faced more than one crisis.
Air India passenger flights were barred from landing in Hong Kong between August 18 and August 31 after 14 passengers on its Delhi-Hong Kong flight of August 14 tested positive for COVID-19 post arrival.
A London-bound Air India plane carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed in a residential area moments after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon. Many people are feared killed.
An Air India pilots' grouping has raised fatigue concerns in the wake of flight crew rosters generated using a new rostering tool, saying that extended waiting periods between duty time will jeopardise crew alertness and performance. "Extended waiting periods, occurring before active flight duties, run counter to enhancing crew readiness and, in fact, contribute to the accumulation of fatigue over time," the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) has said. In a letter to Air India head of safety Henry Donohoe last week, IPG said it has been recently observed that the relentless pursuit of operational efficiency and economic gains has led to an unintended overshadowing of the primary intent behind Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) regulations.
After domestic private air-carriers, Jet Airways and Kingfisher launched their all-economy services to tap low-cost travellers, state-run Air India may now enter the no-frill segment in the domestic sector to beat the downturn in the aviation industry.
Indian automotive industry leader Sunjay Kapur, chairman of Sona Comstar, passed away suddenly on Thursday. He was 53.
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.
Two other MBBS students and three relatives of doctors are missing, she said.
Air India Board is likely to approve the appointments in four key managerial positions, which would put an extra annual burden of over Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million).
'That refresh programme -- because they are big aircraft and we cannot ground them all at the same time -- will last well into 2027.'
The EoI and the share purchase agreement would be issued in January itself for the bidders. While Air India's net loss in 2018-19 was around Rs 8,556 crore, its current total debt is around Rs 80,000 crore.
On Monday, the five independent directors of the company -- Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's secretary general Amit Mitra, Ambuja Realty chairman Harsh Neotia and former air chief Fali H Major -- met Prime Minister's principal secretary T K A Nair and reportedly expressed their anguish over the appointments being made by the company.
"Decoding of the black box is going to give in-depth insight into what happened moments before the plane crash," Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said at a briefing in the national capital.
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.
Starting this October, Air India Express will fly Cochin-Chennai, Cochin-Hyderabad, Cochin-Bangalore, Bangalore-Chennai, Chennai-Kolkata, Hyderabad-Kolkata and Kolkata-Agartala.
This is seen as the first concrete opportunity to break HAL's monopoly in combat aircraft manufacturing, potentially opening the door to a private-sector fighter jet producer.
Apple commenced the sale of its newly launched iPhone 17 series across India on Thursday, prompting large crowds and long queues outside Apple flagship stores in Mumbai and Delhi, as tech enthusiasts gathered to be among the first to purchase the latest devices.
At least 158 people are feared dead after an Air India Express aircraft from Dubai, carrying 173 passengers, overshot the runway while landing at the Mangalore airport in Karnataka on Saturday morning.
When the Tatas re-boarded Air India on January 27 last year, the price of aviation turbine fuel was at over Rs 80,000 per kilolitre. Rupee was trading at around Rs 74 to a US dollar. The Omicron variant of Covid-19 was in prevalence - barely a week earlier, India had reported over 340,000 cases on a single day. Seven-day home quarantine of international travellers was the norm.
As many as 19 flights have received bomb threats in three days and a Riyadh-bound IndiGo flight was diverted to Muscat due to the threat, according to officials.
Vikrant Massey lost his family friend, Clive Kunder, in the tragic Air India plane crash on June 12.
No response has been received for the Expression of Interest floated for the strategic divestment of Air India
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
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