Category: Business

As per the pact, the media unit of Reliance and its affiliates are expected to own at least 61 per cent in the merged entity, with Disney holding the rest.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Walt Disney Co have signed a binding pact to merge their media operations in India, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. As per the pact, the media unit of Reliance and its affiliates are expected to own at least 61 per cent in the merged entity, with Disney holding the rest.

The stake split between the partners may change, depending on how Disney’s other local assets are factored in by the time the deal is closed. The deal is likely to be announced early this week.

The Wall Street Journal earlier this month reported that Disney had agreed to sell 60 per per cent of its Indian business to Viacom18. The deal is seen as a significant move in the Indian media and entertainment industry after the Zee-Sony deal collapsed last month.

Disney agreed to sell 60 per cent of its India business to Viacom 18 at a valuation of $3.9 billion (Rs 33,000 crore). Viacom18 is owned by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/reliance-disney-sign-binding-merger-pact-ril-to-own-61-in-merged-entity-report-418857-2024-02-25

Byju Raveendran, the founder of ed-tech unicorn Byju’s, asserted that he continues as CEO and business will go on as usual as he rejected the shareholders’ decision to oust him.

In Short

• Byju’s founder CEO Byju Raveendran asserts he remains CEO despite shareholders voting for his removal
• Raveendran calls the extraordinary general meeting a ‘farce’ and dismisses rumors of his firing
• Claims ‘essential rules were violated’ in the meeting, deeming it invalid

A day after shareholders of the ed-tech firm Byju’s voted to remove its founder-CEO Byju Raveendran from the board, the 44-year-old businessman asserted that he continues to be the firm’s CEO and management remains unchanged.

In a note to employees, he called Friday’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of shareholders a “farce” and stated that “rumours” of him being fired from Byju’s “have been greatly exaggerated and highly inaccurate”.

“I am writing this letter to you as the CEO of our company. Contrary to what you may have read in the media, I continue to remain CEO, the management remains unchanged, and the board remains the same,” he said.

On Friday, over 60 percent investors of the company voted to remove Raveendran and his family from the board over alleged “mismanagement and failures”.

However, Raveendran rejected the EGM decision and said a lot of essential rules were “violated”.

He wrote, “This means that whatever was decided in that meeting does not count, because it didn’t stick to the established rules…It is crucial for everyone to understand the specific issues that make this EGM a farce”.

Byju Raveendran or his family did not attend the EGM, which they deemed “invalid”.

In his email to the employees, the Byju’s boss also highlighted that the investor’s meeting failed to achieve a proper quorum, as it required the presence of at least one Founder Director.

“The claims made by a small group of select minority shareholders that they have unanimously passed the resolution in the EGM is completely wrong. Only 35 out of 170 shareholders (representing around 45 per cent of shareholding) voted in favour of the resolution. That in itself shows the very limited support that this irrelevant meeting received,” he further said.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/byjus-ceo-byju-raveendran-board-meeting-investors-email-to-staff-egm-meeting-2506743-2024-02-25

Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders paid tribute to his longtime business partner and friend Charlie Munger, who died in November.

Famed investor Warren Buffett”s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders paid tribute to his longtime business partner and friend Charlie Munger, who died in November.

Investors have long sought wisdom from the Oracle of Omaha on markets, the economy and life in general. But Buffett opened Berkshire’s 2023 annual report on a personal note with a dedication to Munger, who died in November at age 99, just 33 days before the milestone birthday.

Excerpts

On investing in stocks:

I can’t remember a period since March 11, 1942 — the date of my first stock purchase — that I have not had a majority of my net worth in equities, U.S.-based equities. And so far, so good. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 100 on that fateful day in 1942 when I pulled the trigger.I was down about $5 by the time school was out. Soon, things turned around and now that index hovers around 38,000. America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one.

On picking winners:

Our goal at Berkshire is simple: We want to own either all or a portion of businesses that enjoy good economics that are fundamental and enduring. Within capitalism, some businesses will flourish for a very long time while others will prove to be sinkholes. It’s harder than you would think to predict which will be the winners and losers. And those who tell you they know the answer are usually either self-delusional or snake-oil salesmen.

On market panics:

Markets can and will unpredictably seize up or even vanish as they did for four months in 1914 and for a few days in 2001. If you believe that American investors are now more stable than in the past, think back to September 2008. Speed of communication and the wonders of technology facilitate instant worldwide paralysis, and we have come a long way since smoke signals. Such instant panics won’t happen often but they will happen.

“Berkshire’s ability to immediately respond to market seizures with both huge sums and certainty of performance may offer us an occasional large-scale opportunity. Though the stock market is massively larger than it was in our early years, today’s active participants are neither more emotionally stable nor better taught than when I was in school. For whatever reasons, markets now exhibit far more casino-like behavior than they did when I was young. The casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants.

On Berkshire’s prospects, for shareholders like his sister, Bertie:

Berkshire should do a bit better than the average American corporation and, more important, should also operate with materially less risk of permanent loss of capital. Anything beyond slightly better,though, is wishful thinking. This modest aspiration wasn’t the case when Bertie went all-in on Berkshire but it is now. There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/global-markets/story/warren-buffetts-annual-letter-tips-how-to-pick-winners-favourite-stock-charlie-munger-418825-2024-02-25

Warren Buffett on Saturday moved to reassure investors that his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), opens new tab would serve them well over the long term, even as he mourned the recent passing of his longtime second-in-command Charlie Munger.

In his widely-read annual letter to Berkshire shareholders Buffett said his more than $900 billion conglomerate has become a fortress that could withstand even an unprecedented financial disaster.

“Berkshire is built to last,” Buffett wrote.

Still, Buffett tempered expectations for Berkshire’s stock price, saying his Omaha, Nebraska-based company “should do a bit better” than the average American corporation, but that its huge size left “no possibility of eye-popping performance.”

“There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others,” Buffett wrote.

The letter was accompanied by Berkshire’s financial results, including a record $37.4 billion operating profit and $96.2 billion net profit for all of 2023.

Berkshire’s shares have risen by 4,384,748% since Buffett took over in 1965, or 19.8% compounded annually.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 (.SPX), opens new tab, in contrast, gained a mere 31,223%, or 10.2% annually, though in recent years Berkshire has performed more like the index.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/warren-buffett-says-berkshire-built-last-though-eye-popping-gains-are-over-2024-02-24

Major investors of Byju’s voted for the ouster of the edtech firm’s CEO Byju Raveendran following a meeting that lasted for hours. Read to know what happens next.

Major investors of embattled edtech firm Byju’s voted to oust founder Byju Raveendran as the chief executive officer (CEO) on Friday after a Zoom call that lasted for hours.

The proceedings of the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), called by major investors of Byju’s, faced delays as several employees of the edtech firm tried to disrupt proceedings, reported Bloomberg news quoting two people who attended.

It was reported that on multiple occasions during the meeting, unidentified participants attempted to disrupt the proceedings by using whistles and other loud noises.

Over 60 per cent of the investors voted for Raveendran’s ouster at the EGM, including Prosus NV and Peak XV Partners, citing mismanagement and other challenges at the edtech company.

Prosus released a statement to confirm that the shareholders passed all the resolutions put forward for a vote. The development comes as a huge blow to the man who was once considered a poster boy of India’s edtech sector.

Not just Raveendran but they also voted to remove his family members from leadership positions at the company.

Byju’s rejects EGM outcome
Byju’s has rejected the resolutions passed by investors during the EGM, including the decision to remove Raveendran from the board of the company.

“The resolutions passed during the recently concluded extraordinary general meeting – attended by a small cohort of select shareholders – are invalid and ineffective,” according to the company statement quoted in a Bloomberg report.

Neither Byju Raveendran nor his family attended the EGM, which they deemed “invalid”.

What happens next?
While major investors have voted for the removal of Byju Raveendran as CEO of the company, it will remain on hold until March 13 as Byju Raveendran had filed a petition against the decision of investors to call for the EGM.

On Wednesday, the Karnataka High Court ruled that any resolutions passed during the EGM would be suspended till the next hearing, but declined to halt proceedings.

Anticipating the outcome of the EGM, Byju’s had already issued a statement.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/byjus-investors-prosus-peak-xv-partners-vote-for-ceo-byju-raveendran-ouster-what-happens-next-2506389-2024-02-23

A consortium of shareholders, including the global tech investor Prosus, aims to dethrone Mr Raveendran and install a new board.

The fate of Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO of ed-tech giant Byju’s, hangs in the balance as an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of its investors is scheduled to take place today. A consortium of shareholders, including the global tech investor Prosus, aims to dethrone Mr Raveendran and install a new board.

Byju’s, once hailed as one of India’s most profitable start-ups with a valuation exceeding $20 billion, has witnessed a staggering decline of approximately 90 per cent in the past year. The ed-tech firm, propelled by the surge in demand for online learning during the Covid pandemic, now grapples with a series of crises. Key investors withdrew support, Deloitte resigned as the auditor, and a legal feud with US lenders over a $1.2 billion loan added to the turmoil.

Ahead of the meeting, Byju’s claimed that the Karnataka High Court had ruled any decisions made at the meeting would be “invalid” until the next hearing, asserting that the move is a mere “smokescreen” to disrupt the company’s management and control.

Goldman Sachs said it remains selective and reiterate its ‘Buy’ rating on HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank Ltd, IndusInd Bank and Bandhan Bank among private players.

Foreign brokerage Goldman Sachs has cut its ratings on YES Bank Ltd shares to ‘Sell’ and cut its rating on State Bank of India and ICICI Bank Ltd to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy. Besides, the broking firm retained its ‘Buy’ rating on HDFC Bank but upgraded Bajaj Finance to ‘Neutral’ from Sell’. All players face the dilemma of maintaining market share or compromising margins in the wake of stronger balance sheets across the sector, the foreign brokerage said.

Goldman Sachs said there are several headwinds to deposit rates including alternatives such as stock market investments and said the Goldilocks period of strong growth and visible profitability is over in the short run. It raised concerns over consumer leverage and said return on asset is likely to moderate going ahead. Goldman Sachs has slashed its earnings estimates for banks across its coverage by 5 per cent for FY25 and 2 per cent for FY26, saying the Goldilocks period is over for the financial sector.

YES Bank, SBI, ICICI Bank price targets

For SBI, the brokerage suggested a target of Rs 741; it sees ICICI Bank at Rs 1,068 while its target price for YES Bank came in at Rs 16. For Bajaj Finance, Goldman Sachs suggested a target of Rs 6,815 while the battered shares of HDFC Bank got a target of Rs 1,915 from the foreign brokerage.

Headwinds to deposit rates

Goldman Sachs sees multiple headwinds to deposit growth and said the system would require to offer attractive rates to make bank-deposits attractive. It said strained financial savings, the rise of alternatives such as stock market investments and strong growth in alternate government schemes such as PPF and small savings are a few headwinds.

Goldilocks period over

Goldman Sachs said its FY25 and FY26 estimates are below consensus on aggregate PAT by 2 per cent and 1 per cent. However, for select names, it lowered its estimates by mid-to-high single digits.

“We believe the proverbial Goldilocks period of strong growth and visible profitability is over for the financial sector in the near term, as headwinds are increasing such as rising pressure on cost of funds due to structural challenges in the funding environment.

Consumer leverage

Goldman Sachs said there were growing concerns on rising consumer leverage, which is posing as a potential asset quality challenges, particularly in unsecured lending. Besides, it said there is pressure on operating costs due to elevated wage inflation as well as the need to expand the distribution network for future deposit growth.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/story/goldman-sachs-says-sell-yes-bank-shares-downgrades-sbi-icici-buy-hdfc-bank-it-says-418640-2024-02-23

The mountain of cash at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B 1.44%increase; green up pointing triangle just keeps growing.

Berkshire’s tally of cash and equivalents has marched skyward for five consecutive quarters, reaching a record $157.2 billion at the end of September. Whether it finished 2023 at new heights is one question investors will look to answer when the Omaha, Neb., company releases its annual report Saturday.

Followers will parse Buffett’s accompanying letter for any plans the famed investor might have for that money as well as his thoughts on the economy and markets. Many are also eager to read any reflections Buffett might share on the life and contributions of Charlie Munger, his longtime partner and friend who died Nov. 28.

Investors got their most recent look at Berkshire’s stock-market moves when the company disclosed it had trimmed its flagship position in Apple in the fourth quarter while boosting its stakes in Chevron and Occidental Petroleum.

One tantalizing mystery: Berkshire wrote for a second consecutive quarter that it was requesting confidential treatment from the Securities and Exchange Commission for one or more holdings it omitted from its public 13F filing. One reason institutional investors can ask the SEC to keep a holding private is that disclosing it would reveal a continuing program of buying or selling a security. Investors can initially ask the SEC for confidentiality for up to one year.

Some observers have guessed that Berkshire bought a financial stock because of an increase in the third quarter in the company’s cost basis for stock investments in the category of banks, insurance and finance.

Meanwhile, the tower of cash leaves Buffett equipped to pounce should he spot an attractive business to add to the Berkshire empire, which includes insurer Geico, BNSF Railway and Dairy Queen. The cash also helps maintain what Buffett described in a February 2009 letter to shareholders as Berkshire’s “Gibraltar-like financial position.”

Many shareholders say they aren’t worried that so much investing firepower is sitting in cash—especially since higher yields mean that money is earning much more than in the recent past.

Berkshire had more than $125 billion in short-term investments in U.S. Treasury bills on Sept. 30. Yields on such short-term government debt rocketed higher as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in a bid to tame inflation. The yield on six-month Treasury bills, for example, was 5.35% Thursday, up from 0.71% in February 2022, according to Tradeweb ICE closes.

Source : https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/a-150-billion-question-what-will-warren-buffett-do-with-all-that-cash-7ddcf36a?st=0wugyg8vz06pqoo

Automakers battle climate groups over how gas-electric vehicles are marketed ahead of new U.S. emission rules

Climate activists are questioning how environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles are as those cars rise in popularity.

The battle over the green bona fides of hybrids comes ahead of what could be the toughest U.S. restrictions on car pollution.

Hybrids combine a gasoline engine with battery power and generally get far better gas mileage than the cars and trucks Americans have typically driven. Hybrid makers led by Toyota Motor 7203 2.25%increase; green up pointing triangle argue that the vehicles’ popularity is something to celebrate and “an important solution toward achieving carbon neutrality,” Toyota executive Yoichi Miyazaki said.

Those on the other side of the debate, including activists and some regulators, say hybrids aren’t good enough if the world hopes to meet ambitious carbon-reduction targets.

“Putting more gasoline-powered cars on roads and saying that’s good for the climate is just misleading,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel at consumer group Public Citizen and a former member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives.

The market’s shift to hybrids has brought a windfall for Toyota and prompted automakers including Ford Motor F -0.90%decrease; red down pointing triangle and General Motors GM 1.23%increase; green up pointing triangle to lean more heavily into gasoline-electric technology.

In December, Public Citizen filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission saying Toyota’s branding of its hybrids as “hybrid EVs” as well as marketing phrases such as “electrified mobility” and “beyond zero” mislead consumers. Toyota North America said its marketing uses terms that are standard in the automotive industry.

Public Citizen has pushed attorneys general in states including Oregon, New York, Rhode Island and Illinois into examining the matter. Representatives at the state offices declined to comment about potential investigations and how far they may have progressed, and the FTC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The marketing debate is a skirmish ahead of an Environmental Protection Agency decision, due this spring, on proposed restrictions. As proposed last year, the new standards would require average fleet emissions to be cut by 56% by 2032 compared with 2026 model-year requirements.

A group representing carmakers including Toyota, Honda Motor and Ford is lobbying against the rules. Automakers forecast they would have to sell 67% electric vehicles by 2032 to meet the standards. The companies say the rules would force them to pivot away too quickly from hybrids and other gasoline-powered cars and result in consumers purchasing more costly vehicles.

The EPA’s “draconian EV mandate” would actually be bad for the environment, said Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s North America head of government affairs, in a message to U.S. dealers.

“We can transition to EVs, but the speed of the transition has to be more realistic,” Ciccone wrote in a memo seen by The Wall Street Journal. Despite “a lot of hits from environmental activists” and others, Ciccone wrote, “we have not—and we will not—back down.”

Source : https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/as-hybrids-become-more-popular-their-green-benefits-are-questioned-3e041ab5?st=3wokye6xfdwjcym

Google has initiated significant layoffs across its various teams, including the Voice Assistant, hardware, engineering and ad sales teams, marking a continuation of the tech industry’s trend towards reducing workforce expenses. The layoffs have affected hundreds of employees within the Voice Assistant unit; hardware teams responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit products; and a considerable portion of the augmented reality (AR) team. This move is part of Google’s broader effort to streamline operations and align resources with its most significant product priorities​​.

According to The Verge, the total number is in the thousands. This comes at a time when Google parent, Alphabet Inc., reported record profits in late January. The company reported $20.4 billion in net income in Q4.

The ad sales team has seen a reduction, specifically targeting the Large Customer Sales (LCS) unit, which is responsible for selling ads to large businesses. The restructuring aims to focus more on the Google Customer Solutions (GCS) team, which deals with smaller business clients, indicating a strategic shift in Google’s approach to ad sales​​.

The layoffs have sparked widespread concern among Google employees, not just about job security but also about the ethical implications of their work, especially as the company continues to invest heavily in advancing AI technology. There’s a growing apprehension that the push towards automation and AI could eventually lead to further job replacements, adding to the existing anxiety over layoffs​​.

According to a recently leaked memo, AI is the #1 focus for Google going into 2024. Specifically, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, full list of goals for 2024 include:

1. Deliver the world’s most advanced, safe, and responsible Al
2. Improve knowledge, learning, creativity and productivity
3. Build the most helpful personal computing platforms and devices.
4. Enable organizations and developers to innovate on Google Cloud
5. Provide the world’s most trusted products and platforms
6. Build a Google that’s extraordinary for Googlers and the world
7. Improve company velocity, efficiency and productivity and deliver durable cost savings

This situation has significantly affected employee morale, with many feeling disillusioned about their future at the company, according to Inc. The layoffs and the strategic emphasis on AI development have led to a sense of cynicism and burnout among the workforce, exacerbated by the fear of being replaced by the very technologies they are helping to create.

Late last year, there were already worries within the company that AI was going to begin replacing employees at Alphabet. Futurism reported late last year the technology giant has already begun the process of replacing some jobs with AI tools developed internally. But this differs from what Google’s senior vice president, Philipp Schindler, said on a recent earnings call about the recent restructuring and job cuts.

Source : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-lays-off-thousands-more-210822278.html

Patanjali has made an all unsolicited all cash offer of Rs 830 crore just days after Pune based Ashdan Properties’s Rs 760 crore offer on a net present value (NPV) basis was declared the highest bidder by banks.

A Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has okayed rebids for the debt laden Rolta India, letting Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved to make an offer for the company.

Patanjali has made an all unsolicited all cash offer of Rs 830 crore just days after Pune based Ashdan Properties’s Rs 760 crore offer on a net present value (NPV) basis was declared the highest bidder by banks. The court said that it is best that all applicants who had expressed interest should be given an opportunity.

Patanjali Ayurved’s unexpected interest of a FMCG company in a defence-focused software company has raised queries. Founded in 1989 by Kamal K Singh, Rolta India deals in GIS and geospatial services for the defence sector.

The company is part of a consortium with state-owned Bharat Electronics and was selected as a development agency for over Rs 50,000 crore worth Battlefield Management System project by the Ministry of Defence in 2015.

The project, was, shelved in in 2018, leaving Rolta India under a debt pile. Rolta India landed in insolvency court in September 2018 when Union Bank of India had filed a petition before the NCLT Mumbai.

Rolta India has a total outstanding debt of around Rs 14,000 crore. It owes Union Bank of India-led consortium a total of Rs 7,100 crore and another Rs 6,699 crore to unsecured foreign bond holders led by Citigroup.

Patanjali terms Rolta move as strategic. Rolta India’s real-estate assets hold more value than its software division. The commpany reportedly owns prime real-estate properties in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Vadodara. In Mumbai, it owns a freehold building of almost 40,000 square feet, four leasehold buildings of over 1 lakh square feet area (in total) in MIDC, Andheri East (Mumbai), according to an ET report.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/industry/story/patanjali-gets-a-foot-in-the-door-for-rolta-india-but-why-does-baba-ramdev-want-the-firm-417908-2024-02-17

Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries is reportedly in talks for a stake in Tata Play from the Walt Disney Company. If talks go through, it will be first time Tata group and Reliance have partnered in a joint venture.

Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries is reportedly in talks for a 29.8 per cent stake in Tata Play from the Walt Disney Company.

Reliance, according to a Business Standard report, is eyeing a bigger footprint India’s television distribution sector with the plan.

Tata Sons has a 50.2 per cent stake in the satellite television broadcaster. Apart from Disney, the remaining shares are owned by Temasek, a Singapore-based fund.

Business Today could not independently verify the report.

If the deal goes through it would be the first time Tata group and Reliance have partnered in a joint venture, the report stated, extending JioCinema’s reach across the Tata Play platform.

Temasek has been intending to sell its 20 per cent stake in the company, valued at close to $1 billion.

For the financial year ended March 31, 2023, Tata Play reported a loss of Rs 105 crore on revenue of Rs 4,499 crore.

Disney and Reliance are reportedly in the last leg of negotiations to finalise their mega stock-and-cash merger to create India’s largest media and entertainment business.

Viacom18 could emerge as the single largest shareholder, with 42-45% in the combined entity. RIL is expected to invest up to $1.5 billion cash in the new entity, owning 60%, with Walt Disney owning the remaining 40%.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/mukesh-ambani-and-tata-group-mulling-a-joint-venture-heres-what-is-cooking-417541-2024-02-15

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, granted subscription perks to designated terrorist groups and others barred from operating in the US, according to campaigners.

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP) found X had granted blue check marks to accounts tied to Hezbollah members, among others.

For $8 (£6.40) a month, a tick allows longer posts and better promotion.

X removed some ticks after the report, saying its security was “robust”.

Mr Musk’s decision to charge for check marks was one of the most controversial changes he made after he bought Twitter in 2022, with critics saying the move would make issues of disinformation worse, opening the platform to impersonators.

The badge was previously free, meant to indicate that the social media platform had verified the identity behind the account.

Many of the recipients were journalists, as well as world leaders and celebrities.

In some cases, those included people facing sanctions in the US, which opened the company to criticism that it was giving a platform to the wrong people and accusations that it was breaking US sanctions law.

Now that the system is paid, however, “X may be raising new legal issues,” the Tech Transparency Project said.

It said X had removed the ticks from the accounts it had identified after its report was published.

The TTP said an account run by Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, had also seemingly paid for its blue check mark. The check mark has now been removed. The account has over 23,000 followers. The Houthis are sanctioned in both the US and UK. The UK government says on its website that it has sanctioned the Houthis “to disrupt their ability to attack international shipping in the Red Sea, and to promote Yemen’s peace, stability and security”.

The US Treasury, which outlines organisations the US will not trade with, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

“The U.S. imposes sanctions on individuals, groups, and countries deemed to be a threat to national security. Elon Musk’s X appears to be selling premium service to some of them”, the TTP wrote in its report.

“A blue checkmark account that bears the name and profile image of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, also indicates it is ‘ID verified’, a service that X offers to premium subscribers as a way to prevent impersonation. X requires users to submit a government-issued ID and a selfie to get verified in this way, though it is unclear if Nasrallah did so”, it added.

Posting on X, the firm’s team in charge of safety wrote that its subscription process was “adhering to legal obligations”, and was independently screened by X’s payment providers.

“Several of the accounts listed in the Tech Transparency Report are not directly named on sanction lists, while some others may have visible account check marks without receiving any services that would be subject to sanctions”, X wrote, adding that the firm would “take action if necessary” after reviewing TTP’s report.

The TTP responded to the post saying even though some of the organisations were not named on the US sanctions list, they were owned by entities that are under US sanctions.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68297121

Global stocks fell on Wednesday, while the dollar and Treasury yields stayed strong, as traders pared back expectations for the pace and scale of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve this year.
The latest shift in rate expectations came after an upside surprise in U.S. inflation on Tuesday that showed the consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.1% on an annual basis, above forecasts for a 2.9% increase.
The data has prompted traders to slash their bets on where U.S. rates will go this year. Futures now point to about 90 basis points worth of cuts from the Fed by December, roughly four quarter-point drops, compared to 110 bps prior to the data release and 160 bps at the end of 2023.

With the prospect of a steep drop in interest rates ebbing, investors kept the pressure on global stocks, which had rallied strongly towards the end of last year on aggressive bets for rate cuts by major central banks globally in 2024.
The MSCI All-World index (.MIWD00000PUS), opens new tab, which hit two-year highs on Monday, was down 0.1%, following a drop on Wall Street overnight that pulled the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab back below 5,000 points. U.S. futures , were up 0.2-0.3%.

Worryingly for investors, the CPI report showed an unexpected pickup in stickier elements, such as service-sector inflation and shelter, helped drive the overall increase.
“When you get a jump like this, and the year-on-year figures really show this rather than the monthly ones, that’s a shock because it just shows that it’s not all plain sailing and we may get more increases in inflation,” Trade Nation senior market analyst David Morrison said.

“We should be surprised by the jump in inflation, because I don’t think anyone was thinking about that. It was more how slowly do we get down towards 2% and this is like kicking the ladder away a bit,” he said.
In Europe, the STOXX (.STOXX), opens new tab edged up 0.1%, as a flurry of stronger earnings boosted the regional index.
Even Japan’s Nikkei (.N225), opens new tab, which hit its highest in 34 years on Tuesday, was not spared from the beating and fell 0.7%.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-wrapup-1-2024-02-14/

The Commission acknowledged the unfair experience suffered by the complainant and highlighted that he had to secure alternative accommodation at an exorbitant price due to the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

A consumer disputes redressal commission in Bengaluru recently imposed a fine of ₹1.45 lakh on online travel company MakeMyTrip for a failed hotel booking that left a traveler stranded in London [Mayur Bharath vs MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt Ltd]

A coram of President M Shobha and members K Anita Shivakumar and Suma Anil Kumar also ordered the platform to pay the complainant-man ₹4.34 lakh which was the additional expense the man had to incur in securing an alternative accommodation.

The Commission acknowledged the unfair experience suffered by the complainant and highlighted that he had to secure alternative accommodation at an exorbitant price due to the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

“It is unfair that the complainant has faced difficulty in occupying the accommodation. With no other option when the OP (MakeMytrip) has not made any proper arrangement to get in to an accommodation, complainant made his own arrangement at Hotel Café Royal by paying ₹6,58,740 which is at Ex.P.3 which is exorbitant amount since the Wimbledon Tennis tournament held in the month of last week of June every year at London,” the Commission said in its order dated January 1.

The Commission was hearing a complaint by one Mayur Bharath. He informed the Commission that despite booking the hotel four months in advance and paying the full amount, MakeMyTrip failed to secure reservation leaving him stranded and incurring additional expenses.

He further stated that he had received the refund for the booking amount, but was not compensated for the exorbitant fees he paid for making alternative arrangements.

On that account, he sought a direction to MakeMyTrip to bear the additional expenses he incurred towards booking another hotel. He also sought compensation of ₹10,000 towards hardship, mental agony and stress and ₹1,00,000 as litigation expenses.

On the other hand, MakeMyTrip opposed the complaint on the ground that they could not be held liable for the hotel not honouring the reservation.

It further stated that it had refunded the entire booking amount and also offered a compensation of ₹50,000, which the complainant denied. Accordingly, MakeMyTrip sought dismissal of the complaint with costs.

The commission found the platform’s argument of acting as a facilitator insufficient

The Court emphasised that consumers place their trust on such platforms when travelling.

“It is not accepted that the contention taken by OP about liability for the deficiency of service is unfair. Since, the complainant has trusted the OP app and booked the hotel believing OP is rendering good services to customers. When there is no privity of contract between the hotel and the customer, the lapses caused must be answerable by OP itself,” the Commission said.

It noted that although the complainant was refunded the booking amount, the alternative arrangement cost ₹4,34,420 more than the original booking. It also noted that MakeMyTrip offered only ₹37,386 as compensation.

Accordingly, the Commission deemed MakeMyTrip responsible for the deficiency in service, especially given the lack of alternative accommodation arrangements and the subsequent financial burden on the consumer.

Source: https://www.barandbench.com/news/consumer-forum-orders-makemytrip-pay-145-lakh-fine-434-lakh-additional-expense-failed-hotel-booking

While Chinese companies operating in India are reticent to speak publicly about the scrutiny, Xiaomi, which has written a letter to the Centre, shows that they continue to struggle in India, especially in the smartphone space where many critical components come from Chinese suppliers.

The Chinese company, which has the biggest share in India’s smartphone market at 18%, assembles smartphones in India with mostly local components and the rest imported from China and elsewhere.

India ramped up scrutiny of Chinese businesses after a 2020 border clash between the two countries killed at least 20 Indian soldiers and four from China, disrupting investment plans of big Chinese companies and drawing repeated protests from Beijing.

While Chinese companies operating in India are reticent to speak publicly about the scrutiny, Xiaomi, which has written a letter to the Centre, shows that they continue to struggle in India, especially in the smartphone space where many critical components come from Chinese suppliers.

In the letter, Xiaomi India President Muralikrishnan B. said India needed to work on “confidence building” measures to encourage component suppliers to setup operations locally.

“There are apprehensions among component suppliers regarding establishing operations in India, stemming from the challenges faced by companies in India, particularly from Chinese origin,” Muralikrishnan said, without naming any companies.

The mobile firm also raised related to compliance and visa issues that it didn’t elaborate on, and other factors. It said “the government should address these concerns and work to instil confidence among foreign component suppliers, encouraging them to set up manufacturing facilities in India.”

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/we-have-apprehensions-xiaomi-says-phone-firms-wary-of-setting-up-base-in-india-417064-2024-02-12

This comes more than two months after it struck a strategic joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor for a 35 per cent holding in MG Motor India

The JSW group on Saturday took its next step in building a presence in the electric vehicle (EV) space when it signed an agreement with the government of Odisha for an integrated EV and EV battery manufacturing project in the state at an investment of Rs 40,000 crore.

This comes more than two months after it formed a strategic joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor for a 35 per cent holding in MG Motor India. MG Motor India was the arm of the Chinese auto maker that owns the British automotive brand Morris Garages.

The strategic joint venture is likely to accelerate growth with a focus on green mobility.

The company has also announced plans to undertake new initiatives, including augmenting local sourcing, improving charging infrastructure, expanding production capacity, and introducing a broader range of vehicles with green mobility being a major area.

The latest project will come up at Cuttack and Paradeep. A statement from the group said that the entry into Odisha came amidst competitive offers from other states.

The project consists of a 50 GWH EV battery plant, EVs, lithium refinery, copper smelter and related component manufacturing units.

According to the group, the project will help create over 11,000 jobs, marking a significant growth in employment generation in the state.

The project will also spur employment generation in ancillary and support services. It is also forecast to catalyse MSME development, and open up several opportunities in the auto component supply chain and services sector.

“Our long-standing relationship with Odisha and its people forms the foundation of our new venture. This project is a milestone in our journey, reflecting our commitment to the state’s development and prosperity.

Source : https://www.telegraphindia.com/business/jsw-group-signs-agreement-with-odisha-to-invest-rs-40000-crore-in-electric-vehicle-plant/cid/1999662

This move comes in response to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision on January 31, instructing Paytm Payments Bank to cease all banking services, including deposit acceptance and payment processing, starting February 29, 2024.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has advised all its field offices to abstain from accepting claims linked to bank accounts in Paytm Payment Bank. This order will come into effect from February 23, 204. For EPFO subscribers with accounts in Paytm Payment Bank, this restriction may affect the timely processing of withdrawals and credit transactions.

This move comes in response to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision on January 31, instructing Paytm Payments Bank to cease all banking services, including deposit acceptance and payment processing, starting February 29, 2024.
Background
Last year, EPFO had permitted EPF payments through Paytm Payment Bank and Airtel Payments Bank accounts.

Billionaire’s willingness to pay legal bills for people who want to sue Disney is latest foray against the company and CEO Bob Iger

Elon Musk is intensifying his feud with Disney

Musk, the billionaire owner of X, is soliciting people who want to sue Disney for discrimination. He says he is willing to help pay for their cases.

“If you were discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel, etc), just reply to this post to receive legal support,” Musk said Tuesday in a post on X.

The outreach came the same day actress Gina Carano sued Disney and Lucasfilm, with Musk’s financial backing, for wrongful termination from “The Mandalorian,” a television series inspired by the Star Wars franchise.

The lawsuit and solicitation of additional complaints are the latest escalations in Musk’s beef with Disney and its CEO Bob Iger, a feud that kicked off several months ago and has shown little sign of letting up. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Musk published several tweets that were critical of Disney.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/elon-musk-opens-new-front-in-disney-fight-2425f063?st=0wf82xmoafy7zl4

Paytm crisis: The Tokyo-based tech investor saw uncertainty growing in India’s regulatory environment, as well as over Paytm Payments Bank Ltd.’s license, Navneet Govil told Bloomberg News on Thursday.

SoftBank reportedly sold a majority of its stake in Paytm before the RBI order caused the fintech firm’s shares to dive.

The Tokyo-based tech investor saw uncertainty growing in India’s regulatory environment, as well as over Paytm Payments Bank Ltd.’s license, Navneet Govil told Bloomberg News on Thursday.

“We felt it was prudent to start monetizing,” the Vision Fund’s finance chief said. “We’re glad we did a good portion of Paytm before the recent stock correction.”

SoftBank has been offloading Paytm shares regularly since at least November 2022 through last month, according to Bloomberg. The Japanese investor’s stake in Paytm was around 5% as of January, compared with a roughly 18.5% stake around the time of the payments company’s initial public offering in 2021.

Paytm has fielded multiple warnings from regulators over the last two years about dealings between its popular payments app and is banking arm. The Reserve Bank of India has suspended much of the banking operation’s business, sending Paytm’s stock price down more than 40% from its January peak.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/softbank-vision-fund-sold-down-stake-in-paytm-before-rbis-torpedo-416792-2024-02-09

Pearl Kapur, the Founder and CEO of Zyber 365, boasts a remarkable net worth of $1.1 billion (Rs ₹ 9,129 crore).

New Delhi: India is home to hundreds of billionaires, with businessmen like Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani among the richest people globally. As Indian economy thrives, a new luminary has emerged, rewriting the narrative of success at an astonishingly young age. At 27, Pearl Kapur has etched his name in entrepreneurial history as India’s youngest billionaire.
His success was a result of the meteoric rise of his startup, Zyber 365. Founded in May 2023, Zyber 365 is a Web3 and AI-based OS start-up that has not only disrupted the retail sector but also achieved the coveted unicorn status within three months. A startup that is valued at over $1 billion is known as a unicorn.

The company, headquartered in London with operations based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has been hailed as India and Asia’s fastest unicorn, attaining a valuation of $1.2 billion (approximately ₹ 9,840 crore).

Pearl Kapur, the Founder and CEO of Zyber 365, boasts a remarkable net worth of $1.1 billion (Rs ₹ 9,129 crore) holding a commanding 90% of shares in the company. The startup recently secured $100 million in Series A funding, with 8.3% of the investment coming from the SRAM & MRAM Group, an agrarian company that recognized the immense potential in Zyber 365.

Kapur, an MSC Investment Banking (CFA Pathway) graduate from Queen Mary University of London, is recognised as an innovator in the realm of Web3 technology.

Before Zyber 365, Pearl Kapur’s journey included stints as a Financial Advisor at AMPM Store and a Business Advisor for Antier Solutions. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to found Billion Pay Technologies Pvt Ltd in February 2022.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/feature/india-youngest-billionaire-pearl-kapur-is-27-built-rs-9-800-crore-company-in-90-days-5017867

Gautam Adani is currently the 12th richest person in the world with a net worth of $101 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Industrialist Gautam Adani’s fortune has hit $100 billion again, a year after his group’s share prices saw an unprecedented rout sparked by Hindenburg Research’s market manipulation charges. Adani Group now stands cleared of all charges.
Gautam Adani is currently the 12th richest person in the world with a net worth of $101 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

His flagship Adani Enterprises reported 130% surge in profit last week, following which its shares rose for the eighth consecutive day on Wednesday.

Once valued at over $150 billion, Adani Group saw a big plunge in share prices last year after a short-seller attack, but has regained much of his lost wealth after a clean chit from the Supreme Court and the markets regulator.

The company had termed the Hindenburg allegations as “malicious combination of selective misinformation and concealed facts relating to baseless and discredited allegations to drive an ulterior motive”.

The port-to-energy tycoon reached a low of $37.7 billion, losing around $80 billion following the report. He has regained over $16 billion this year, according to a Bloomberg tracker, and now remains about $50 billion below his 2022 peak.

In a big victory for the company, the Supreme Court in January backed markets regulator SEBI’s clean chit to the Adani Group and ruled out a need for further probe.

Source:https://www.ndtv.com/business-news/gautam-adani-enters-100-billion-club-again-year-after-short-seller-attack-5016886

Paytm News Today: Action against Paytm Payments Bank is taken due to “persistent non-compliance” and adequate time was given for corrective actions, Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Swaminathan said on Thursday. He added that the action has been taken against the Paytm Payments Bank and not the Paytm app as a platform.

The central bank will take suitable steps as warranted going ahead, Swaminathan said at a post-MPC announcement press briefing held in Mumbai along with RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.

Das added, “There is no worry about the system, we are only talking about a specific payments bank.”

If everything had been complied with, why should RBI act against a regulated entity, asked Das, without naming Paytm.

Also, RBI will be issuing a set of FAQs (frequently asked questions) next week to assuage public concerns following the Paytm action, Das added.

Amid concerns over non-compliance, RBI has taken various measures against PPBL wherein it will not be allowed to offer any services concerning deposits, prepaid instruments and e-wallet after February 29.

The entity has also been directed to stop onboarding new customers.

‘RBI To Deal With Paytm Issue’

Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi on Wednesday said it is for the Reserve Bank to deal with the Paytm issue and the government has nothing to do with the matter for now.

He also said that Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) is a small financial entity and there are no systemic stability concerns.

“It is action taken by the regulator. They regulate the banks. The government has had nothing to do until now when it comes to the actions taken against Paytm. And we believe that RBI must have taken the action in the overall interest of the consumer and the economy,” Joshi told PTI in an interview.

With regard to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Paytm’s payment aggregator subsidiary, he said permission that has been sought for investment from China.

“The application is under review as it is an inter-ministerial process. It is under consideration,” he said.

On whether there are any financial stability concerns due to the action taken by the RBI against PPBL, Joshi said it is a very small bank and there were no systemic stability concerns as such.

“The customers who have an account in the payments bank, they will have to shift their account…. From what I understand, it is not the bank that will migrate the accounts. The customers have to do it,” he added.

Against the backdrop of RBI actions, on Tuesday, Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Sources said that it was made clear to him that Paytm has to deal with RBI.

Core Issues

There are allegations that PPBL had lakhs of non-KYC (Know Your Customer) compliant accounts and in thousands of cases, a single PAN (Permanent Account Number) was used for opening multiple accounts.

There were also instances where the total value of transactions was worth crores of rupees, much beyond regulatory limits in minimum KYC pre-paid instruments, raising money laundering concerns, the sources told PTI.

Source: https://www.news18.com/business/paytm-rbi-news-action-against-paytm-payments-bank-8771034.html

The Finance Minister said the Congress was now shifting the blame on the Centre. “They are adding a poisonous narrative to this. Language of separatism! Which brother of DK Shivakumar said earlier – ‘you don’t give us our tax money, give us a separate state!”

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday responded to the Karnataka government’s charge that she rejected Rs 5,495 crore special grants to the southern state despite being recommended by the 15th Finance Commission. She said that this recommendation that the Karnataka government referred to “did not form the final part of the 15th Finance Commission report’.

“So the question of not accepting recommendation does not arise at all,” the finance minister said, adding that she complies with the Finance Commission’s recommendation to the last word. “Beyond the Finance Commission report, Rs 6,279.94 crore has been provided to Karnataka to assist capital expenditure plans,” she said.

Sitharaman said the state government was now realising that it could not fulfil the guarantees post which they won and came to power in Karnataka. “During the campaign, many of us had said this will cost them Rs 60,000 crore annually roughly,” she said, adding that the Congress was now under pressure to meet guarantees.

The Finance Minister said the Congress was now shifting the blame on the Centre. “They are adding a poisonous narrative to this. Language of separatism! Which brother of DK Shivakumar said earlier – ‘you don’t give us our tax money, give us a separate state!”

Sitharaman’s response came a day after Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the 15th Finance Commission had recommended a special grant of Rs 5,495 crore for the state in the interim budget, which the Finance Minister declined.

He said under the 14th Finance Commission (2015-2020), Karnataka received 4.71 per cent of the tax share, which was reduced to 3.64 per cent by the 15th Finance Commission (2020-2025). This 1.07 per cent decrease resulted in an estimated loss of Rs 62,098 crore for Karnataka over five years.

“To compensate, the 15th Finance Commission recommended a special grant of Rs 5,495 crore for Karnataka in the interim budget, which Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman subsequently declined,” the Congress leader said on Tuesday.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/cant-fulfil-poll-freebies-shifting-blame-sitharaman-fires-back-at-siddaramaiah-says-gave-additional-funds-to-karnataka-416573-2024-02-07

More than half of the group’s market value comes from Tata Consultancy Services, whose market cap hit the ₹15 lakh crore mark  for the first time.

The market capitalisation of the Tata Group, comprising 18 firms, went past ₹30 lakh crore backed by a sharp rally in TCS and Tata Motors.

More than half of the group’s market value comes from Tata Consultancy Services, whose market cap hit the ₹15 lakh crore mark for the first time.

The surge was boosted by a deal the IT firm signed to transform Europe Assistance’s IT operating model using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The Reliance Group holds the second position on the market-cap leaderboard, at ₹21.60 lakh crore. The Adani Group, with interests across various infrastructure sectors and capital-intensive commodities, is ranked third, with a combined market value of ₹15.54 lakh crore.

Tata Motors and Titan both had market value of over ₹3 lakh crore as on Tuesday.
The former’s shares are at an all-time high after the company reported a strong set of financial numbers for the quarter ended December. Besides a strong Q3, analysts gave Tata Motors a thumbs-up on its continued improvement in JLR, the PV and CV business, and reduced net automotive debt from current levels. Year-to-date its shares are up nearly 19 per cent. Titan, however, has had a dismal start to the year, with its shares shedding 3.2 per cent.

The company was last directed to stop onboarding new customers in 2022. However, it continued operations without making any operational changes for existing customers, including the strengthening of its KYC norms.

Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) was last week ordered to halt much of its operations by February 29, and the Reserve Bank of India’s regulatory action could be more of a death blow than a slap on the wrist, people in the know told DH. It is learnt that the RBI has been keeping an eye on PPBL going back as far as 2017, soon after Paytm’s banking arm began operations.

Even in its press statement, the central bank highlighted that the company’s issues with non-compliance have been persistent. The company was last directed to stop onboarding new customers in 2022. However, it continued operations without making any operational changes for existing customers, including the strengthening of its KYC norms.

This could be the main factor behind the RBI now simply asking it to wind up operations without providing any clarity on how PPBL can make a turn around. Instead, the payment bank’s license will likely be revoked in the near future, reports indicate.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/rbi-unlikely-to-go-lenient-on-paytm-after-persistent-noncompliance-2880915

Paytm, whose price band has been revised to 10 per cent from 20 per cent, was locked at Rs 438.35, down 10 per cent.

Shares of One 97 Communications Ltd (Paytm) were locked at their lower circuit limits of 10 per cent for the third straight session on Monday following a media report that suggested the RBI was considering canceling Paytm Payment Bank’s licence. The management clarification on speculative media articles regarding an ED investigation and no involvement of the company and its CEO in anti-money laundering activities, could not lift the counter.

The Paytm stock, whose price band has been revised to 10 per cent from 20 per cent, was locked at Rs 438.35, down 10 per cent. With this, the scrip has fallen 43 per cent in the last three sessions. A Bloomberg report suggested that the RBI was considering scrapping the license of Paytm Payments Bank as early as next month. Another report said the trader body CAIT advised traders to migrate from Paytm for other payment options.

A couple of brokerages have cut target prices of PAytm sharply following the RBI restrictions. Jefferies downgraded the scrip to ‘Underperform’ and cut its target price to Rs 500 per share. Macquarie reduced its target price to Rs 650 per share.

Motilal Oswal was last having a ‘watchful stance’ on the resilience of Paytm’s business model and its ability to navigate the uncertain regulatory and macro environment. It suggested a target of Rs 575 on Paytm.

Paytm came out with a clarification. “We would like to set the record straight and deny any involvement in anti-money laundering activities. We have and continue to abide by Indian laws and take regulatory orders with utmost seriousness,” Paytm said.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/company-stock/story/paytm-shares-plunged-10-today-down-43-in-3-days-heres-why-416150-2024-02-05

Byju’s recently released the salary for January to its staff, following which founder Byju Raveendran wrote an emotional letter highlighting the ongoing challenges at the edtech firm.

Edtech giant Byju’s parent firm Think and Learn Pvt Ltd. recently paid the January salaries to its staff amid financial challenges, following which founder Byju Raveendran wrote an emotional letter to employees.

Byju reached out to employees, expressing gratitude for their support during tough times. Earlier, the company’s founders and family pledged their house to cover employee salaries due to a liquidity crunch.

“I have been moving mountains for months to make payroll, and this time, the struggle was even bigger to ensure that you receive what you rightfully deserve,” wrote Byju Raveendran.

“Everybody has made sacrifices, everybody has grappled with decisions they never desired to make, and everybody is a little bit weary in this battle, but nobody has chosen to give up,” added Raveendran.

Byju’s initiated a rights issue to raise $200 million at a significantly lower valuation compared to its peak valuation in March 2022.

Byju reassured employees of his commitment, saying, “Nothing matters to me more than your belief in my ability to deliver.”

“I fight for you. You fight alongside me. This is the sacred relationship that has helped me weather every storm,” Raveendran said.

He shared a poignant moment when his father, a role model, was moved to tears after negative news about the company.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/byjus-founders-letter-to-staff-over-delayed-salaries-have-been-moving-mountains-2497647-2024-02-05

The clarification comes after Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra on Saturday said the enforcement directorate “will probe Paytm Payments Bank if any fresh charges of fund siphoning are found.”

Paytm Payments Bank has clarified that the firm nor Vijay Shekhar Sharma, One97 CEO, were under enforcement directorate scrutiny for money laundering.

RBI had reportedly found hundreds of thousands of accounts at the bank created without proper identification. The central bank is concerned some of these accounts may have been used to launder money. “One 97 Communications Ltd and Paytm Payments Bank operate with the highest ethical standards. We can confirm that neither we nor OCL’s founder-CEO have been the subject matter of investigation by the Enforcement Directorate regarding money laundering,” a spokesperson for Paytm Payments Bank said.

The clarification comes after Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra on Saturday said the enforcement directorate “will probe Paytm Payments Bank if any fresh charges of fund siphoning are found.”

The spokesperson some merchants on its platforms have been the subject of inquiries, and the bank was fully cooperating with the authorities in such instances. “We categorically deny any involvement in money laundering activities and believe fair and responsible journalism is crucial for accurate information dissemination,” the spokesperson added.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/no-money-laundering-probe-on-us-or-ceo-paytm-payments-bank-clears-air-on-ed-report-416086-2024-02-04

More than 1,000 users were found to have linked the same Permanent Account Number to their accounts.

Hundreds of accounts created on Paytm Payments Bank without proper identification were one of the major reasons for the Reserve Bank of India to impose stringent curbs on the company, people familiar with the matter said. These accounts with inadequate Know-Your-Customer (KYC) conducted transactions worth crores of rupees on the platform, leading to fears of potential money laundering.
More than 1,000 users were found to have linked the same Permanent Account Number (PAN) to their accounts. The compliance submitted by the bank was found to be incorrect during verification processes conducted by both the RBI and auditors.

RBI is concerned that some of the accounts could have been used for money laundering, sources said. As well as informing the Enforcement Directorate, the RBI has sent its findings to the ministry of home affairs and the prime minister’s office.

The Enforcement Directorate will probe Paytm Payments Bank if any evidence of illegal activity is found, Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra told Reuters.

There were also reports of non-disclosure of major transactions within the group and associated parties, further intensifying regulatory worries. The central bank’s scrutiny also unearthed loopholes in the governance standards, particularly in the linkage between Paytm Payments Bank and its parent company, One97 Communications Ltd.

Transactions routed through the parent app of Paytm raised data privacy concerns, leading to the RBI’s decision to halt transactions through Paytm Payments Bank. While user deposits in savings accounts, wallets, FASTags, and NCMC accounts are not immediately affected, the company will have to rely on third-party banks for its operations until February 29.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/business-news/1000-accounts-1-pan-money-laundering-how-paytm-payments-bank-came-under-rbi-radar-4990243

The boss of Jaguar Land Rover has denied that his company’s vehicles are especially vulnerable to theft.

Adrian Mardell said the Range Rover “is not ‘Britain’s most stolen vehicle'” after a series of reports about soaring insurance costs for UK owners.

He accused the insurance industry of failing to take into account all data when setting cover and premiums.

Last year, JLR launched its own insurance after some drivers were unable to get cover at all.

Speaking angrily to journalists after JLR announced its latest financial results, Mr Mardell said that vehicle theft by organised criminals was a serious issue in the UK, but his own business had been unfairly singled out.

“It is not ‘Britain’s most stolen vehicle’, as reported incorrectly”, said Mr Mardell, adding that he wanted to correct what he described as “misinformation” and a “myth” about thefts, in particular where Range Rovers were concerned.

It follows reporting, including by Bloomberg, which said the Range Rover Velar model “was the most-stolen car in the year to March 2023, with more than two out of every 100 reported stolen” citing data from the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

A wave of car thefts in recent years has concerned some carmakers that it may have a knock-on effect on demand for vehicles, particularly luxury models.

Range Rovers, often used by celebrities, politicians and even royalty, have received much of the attention.

The cars can cost anything between £40,080 to almost £200,000 for more advanced models.

Mr Mardell said thefts of Range Rovers had fallen 27% last year compared with 2022 and new models were especially secure.

Of the latest Range Rover model, he said only 11 vehicles out of a total of 12,800 sold had been stolen, according to police data.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68188064

Hit show to be distributed broadly, including on YouTube, rather than exclusively on audio-streaming service

Spotify green up pointing triangle has reached a new deal with star podcaster Joe Rogan that will allow his hit show to be distributed broadly.

Rogan’s fresh deal—estimated to be worth as much as $250 million over its multiyear term, according to people familiar with the matter—involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales.

Source : https://www.wsj.com/business/media/joe-rogan-podcast-spotify-deal-28eb5f74

The shares plunged by their daily limit of 20% each on Thursday and Friday, erasing $2 billion of its market value, after RBI ordered the bank to to stop its popular mobile wallet business along with other activities, citing “persistent non-compliance and supervisory concerns”.

Paytm Payments Bank could lose its operating licence as early as next month after customer deposits are secured. The RBI had on Wednesday ordered Paytm Payments Bank, 49% owned by Paytm’s parent company, to stop its popular mobile wallet business along with other activities, citing “persistent non-compliance and supervisory concerns”.

A Bloomberg report says the regulator could now scrap the bank’s licence after the February 29 deadline when fintech’s banking arm is required to stop customers from replenishing their savings accounts on the popular digital payment wallet.

However, no final decision has been reached and the RBI’s decision could change based on Paytm’s representation, the report added.

Paytm went public with much fanfare in late 2021 but its stock has since slumped more than 70% as investors questioned its profit-making ability and it tussled with regulators.

The shares plunged by their daily limit of 20% each on Thursday and Friday, erasing $2 billion of its market value, after the RBI order.

The proposed move is in response to violations including misuse of customer documentation rules and non-disclosure of material transactions.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/rbi-may-cancel-operating-licence-of-paytm-payments-bank-next-month-says-report-416018-2024-02-03

Paytm Payments Bank Limited is prohibited from accepting new deposits, credit transactions, or top-ups in customer accounts, prepaid instruments, wallets, FASTags, and more from February 29 onwards.

Paytm Payments Bank has reassured its customers that their existing balances are safe, following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) directive restricting the bank from accepting new deposits or allowing credit transactions after February 29, 2024.

In an email and text message to customers, the bank stated that while new deposits or credit transactions will not be permitted after the specified date, there is no restriction on withdrawing money from existing balances.

“Your money is safe with the bank,” the Paytm Payments Bank said.

The central bank’s action follows a comprehensive system audit report and compliance validation by external auditors. Starting February 29, 2024, Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL) is prohibited from accepting new deposits, credit transactions, or top-ups in customer accounts, prepaid instruments, wallets, FASTags, and more.

Customers are allowed to withdraw or use balances without restrictions, but other banking services like fund transfers and UPI facilities will be discontinued. The nodal accounts of One97 Communications Ltd and Paytm Payments Services Ltd. must be terminated by February 29, 2024.

Source: https://www.indiatvnews.com/business/news/paytm-payments-bank-reassures-safety-of-existing-balances-after-rbi-restrictions-2024-02-02-914884

A former corporate-defense lawyer handled case that led to Tesla CEO’s pay deal being nixed

The case that brought down Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package at Tesla was driven by a lawyer who spent decades representing big companies like Goldman Sachs and 21st Century Fox, and a shareholder who played drums in a heavy-metal band.

The bombshell decision, issued Tuesday in the Delaware Court of Chancery, came more than five years after a Tesla shareholder originally filed suit, asking the state’s business-law court to cancel Musk’s pay package at the electric-car maker.

The suit, filed in 2018, alleged that Tesla’s chief executive controlled the approval process and that the board misled investors, who later approved it. Musk has said he didn’t dictate the terms of his pay plan.

The judge in the case, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, found that the process for securing approval of Musk’s compensation was “deeply flawed,” and agreed this week to rescind the CEO’s package, which was valued at a maximum of $55.8 billion.

“This would be as though it never happened,” said Greg Varallo, lead lawyer for the single shareholder plaintiff, Richard Tornetta, referring to the board’s decision to award the package. Varallo and his team defeated a team of lawyers led by heavyweight New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore and its former chairman, Evan Chesler.

The case was originally filed by lawyers from Friedman Oster & Tejtel and Delaware-based Andrews & Springer, which also represents Tornetta in a separate lawsuit that began in 2019. That suit, which is ongoing, is challenging the sale of Pandora Media to Sirius XM.

Friedman Oster & Tejtel is based in New York, but it specializes in corporate-misconduct cases in Delaware, said principal David Tejtel. Tornetta’s lawyers at Andrews & Springer didn’t respond to requests for comments.

Varallo, 64, and several other lawyers at Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann, joined the litigation in 2021. At the time, Tornetta had just survived a motion to dismiss by Tesla’s board of directors, raising the likelihood that the case could go to trial. Tejtel said the original legal team recognized it was going to be a massive undertaking.

“It made sense to enlist reinforcements,” he said, on the decision to bring on Varallo. The trial began in 2022.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/the-lawyerand-drummerwho-felled-elon-musks-55-8-billion-compensation-package-07ce1a0a

While the government tax revenues have seen a significant surge, but the government seems to spend judiciously while decreasing the budget deficit to 5.1 per cent in the next financial year, which is at 5.8 per cent for the current fiscal year ending in March.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget 2024 speech. Outlined a comprehensive plan for the next five years, which includes increased housing opportunities, access to free electricity, and improved medical care, particularly for women.

While the government tax revenues have seen a significant surge, but the government seems to spend judiciously while decreasing the budget deficit to 5.1 per cent in the next financial year, which is at 5.8 per cent for the current fiscal year ending in March.

In the interim budget, which preceded a new administration, Sitharaman allocated Rs 11.1 lakh crore to capital spending, which is an 11.1 per cent increase from the previous year. Sitharaman assured support for including farmers, youth, women, and the unprivileged sectors over the next five years.

Here Are Key Announcements in Budget 2024 For Common Man

The Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 programs will be accelerated to enhance nutrition delivery, early childhood care, and development.

Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen)

The ongoing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen) is nearing its 3 crore houses target, with an additional goal of constructing 2 crore houses set for the next five years.

Housing for Middle Class Scheme

The government planning to launch the “Housing for Middle Class” scheme, which will incentivise middle-class individuals to either purchase or construct their own homes.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/budget/what-is-inside-budget-2024-for-common-man-here-are-10-key-announcements-from-nirmala-sitharamans-speech-article-107339245

Paytm Payments Bank has been ordered by the RBI to stop accepting fresh deposits in its accounts or popular wallets after February 29, 2024.

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday ordered Paytm Payments Bank to stop accepting fresh deposits in its accounts or popular wallets after February 29, 2024.
Paytm Payments Bank, which is part of one of India’s largest payment firms Paytm, was told by the regulator that it will not be able to take fresh deposits, facilitate credit transactions, or offer fund transfers, including Unified Payments Interface (UPI) facility after February 29.

“No further deposits or credit transactions or top ups shall be allowed in any customer accounts, prepaid instruments, wallets, FASTags, NCMC cards, etc. after February 29, 2024, other than any interest, cashbacks, or refunds which may be credited anytime,” Yogesh Dayal, a chief general manager with the central bank, said in a press statement.

Withdrawal or utilisation of balances by its customers from their accounts including savings bank accounts, current accounts, prepaid instruments, FASTags, National Common Mobility Cards, etc. are to be permitted without any restrictions, up to their available balance, the statement added.

Why RBI Has Put Restrictions On Paytm Payments Bank?
The RBI said it had in March 2022 asked the Paytm Payments Bank to stop adding new customers.

However, a Comprehensive System Audit report and subsequent compliance validation report of the external auditors revealed persistent non-compliances and continued material supervisory concerns in the bank, warranting further supervisory action, the RBI said, without disclosing details.

The action against Paytm Payments Bank was taken under Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, the central bank added.

What Paytm Payments Bank Said On RBI Restrictions
Paytm Payments Bank, an associate of One 97 Communications Limited (OCL), said it is taking “immediate steps” to comply with the RBI’s directions.

OCL, as a payments company, works with various banks (not just Paytm Payments Bank), on various payments products, the fintech company said in a statement on Thursday.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/paytm-paytm-news-explained-why-rbi-has-put-restrictions-on-paytm-payments-bank-4970845

Given that we are just months away from the Lok Sabha elections, this will be an interim budget, to lay down the government’s expenditure priorities for the April-June 2024 quarter.

Bengaluru: At 11 am on Thursday , Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will rise to present the interim budget for the coming financial year (2024-25). This will be her sixth consecutive budget speech, a feat only achieved by the late Morarji Desai.

Given that we are just months away from the Lok Sabha elections, this will be an interim budget, to lay down the government’s expenditure priorities for the April-June 2024 quarter. The full budget for the year is likely to be presented in July, after government formation.

“The upcoming pre-election interim budget occurs at a juncture when the overall economic landscape appears stable. This is underpinned by the easing of financial conditions, robust macroeconomic data,” said Rajani Sinha, Chief Economist at CareEdge.

“Nonetheless, the current budgeting exercise is also confronted by economic headwinds like deceleration in the global economy, pressures in the agriculture sector, and strains on the rural economy,” Sinha said.

While the Indian economy has shown remarkable resilience since the Covid-19 pandemic, a large part of the growth has been driven by government expenditure on infrastructure and rural programmes, and on schemes aimed at boosting manufacturing.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/union-budget/interim-budget-with-eye-on-polls-fm-looks-to-meet-expectations-2873891

Bengaluru: Shares of Indian payments firm Paytm tumbled 20 per cent in pre-open trade on Thursday, after a move by the country’s financial regulator to halt business at Paytm’s payments bank unit sparked fears of hits to the company’s profitability and reputation.

Paytm’s stock fell to a six-week low of 609 rupees.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday ordered Paytm Payments Bank, an associate of Paytm, to stop accepting fresh deposits in its accounts or popular wallets from March, raising worries that the move could erode revenue from the company’s main payments business.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/companies/paytm-shares-plunge-20-after-rbi-orders-payments-bank-unit-to-stop-business-2874260 

The IMF has forecast global growth of 3.1% in 2024, up two-tenths of a percentage point from its October forecast, and said it expected unchanged growth of 3.2% in 2025

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised India’s growth forecast upwards amid better-than-expected resilience in its domestic demand, it said in its latest World Economic Outlook update for January.

IMF now expects India’s GDP to grow by 6.7% in FY24 as against 6.3% forecast made in the October 2023 update of its report. For FY25 and FY26, India’s GDP growth is seen steady at 6.5%, said IMF on Tuesday.

“Growth in India is projected to remain strong at 6.5% in both 2024 (FY25) and 2025 (FY26), with an upgrade from October of 0.2 percentage point for both years, reflecting resilience in domestic demand,” the IMF said in its report. Reserve Bank of India has estimated 7.4% GDP growth for India in FY24.

IMF edged its forecast for global economic growth higher, upgrading the outlook for both the United States and China – the world’s two largest economies – and citing faster-than-expected easing of inflation.

The IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said the global lender’s updated World Economic Outlook showed that a “soft landing” was in sight, but overall growth and global trade still remained lower than the historical average.

“We find that the global economy continues to display remarkable resilience and we are now in the final descent toward a ‘soft landing’ with inflation declining steadily and growth holding up,” Gourinchas said. “But the base of expansion remains on the slower side and there might be turbulence ahead.”

The IMF said the improved outlook was supported by stronger private and public spending despite tight monetary conditions, as well as increased labor force participation, mended supply chains and cheaper energy and commodity prices.

The IMF forecast global growth of 3.1% in 2024, up two-tenths of a percentage point from its October forecast, and said it expected unchanged growth of 3.2% in 2025. The historical average for the 2000-2019 period was 3.8%.

It forecast global trade growth of 3.3% in 2024 and 3.6% in 2025, well below the historical average of 4.9%, with gains weighed down by some 3,000 trade restrictions that were imposed in 2023.

The IMF stuck with its October forecast for headline inflation of 5.8% for 2024, but lowered the 2025 forecast to 4.4% from 4.6% in October. Excluding Argentina, which has seen inflation spike, global headline inflation would be lower, Gourinchas said.

Advanced economies should see average inflation of 2.6%, down four-tenths of a percentage point from the October forecast, with inflation set to reach central bank targets of 2% in 2025. By contrast, inflation would average 8.1% in emerging market and developing economies in 2024, before easing to 6% in 2025.

The IMF said average oil prices would drop 2.3% in 2024, versus the 0.7% decline it had predicted in October, and said prices were expected to drop 4.8% in 2025.

RED SEA ATTACKS

The IMF said new commodity price spikes from geopolitical shocks, including continued attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, could prolong tight monetary conditions. Gourinchas told reporters the IMF was watching developments in the Middle East closely, but the broader economic impact remained “relatively limited.”

“It doesn’t seem to represent, as of now, a major source of potentially reigniting supply-side inflation,” he said.

The United States got one of the biggest upgrades in the January update of the IMF outlook, with its GDP now forecast to expand by 2.1% in 2024 versus the 1.5% forecast in October. Growth was expected to ease to 1.7% in 2025.

Gourinchas credited fiscal support and strong consumer spending for the upgrade, but said the IMF had told Washington it had concerns that some of its subsidies from domestic producers and other industrial policies could violate global trade rules.

The euro area got a downgrade, and was now expected to grow just 0.9% in 2024 and 1.7% in 2025, with the biggest European economy – Germany – expected to see minimal GDP growth of 0.5% in 2024 instead of the 0.9% forecast in October.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/imf-raises-indias-growth-forecast-for-fy24-to-67-from-63-says-global-soft-landing-in-sight-415447-2024-01-30

Delaware Court of Chancery rejects a pay package initially approved for Musk in 2018

A Delaware judge struck down Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package at Tesla after finding the process for securing its approval “deeply flawed,” a major setback for the chief executive of the world’s most valuable automaker.

The decision, issued Tuesday in the Delaware Court of Chancery, calls into question how Tesla’s board plans to compensate Musk, a serial entrepreneur with an array of other business interests.

It also puts greater attention on Musk’s personal wealth, much of which is tied up in shares of his companies. He sold a portion of his Tesla shares to help purchase Twitter-turned-X in late 2022.

“The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote in the opinion, citing Musk’s “extensive ties” with those negotiating his most recent pay deal, which shareholders approved in 2018. The pay package was valued at a maximum of $55.8 billion, McCormick wrote.

Before the opinion landed, Musk had begun pushing for greater control over Tesla, where he’s the largest shareholder with 13% ownership. Earlier this month, he said he feels uncomfortable transforming Tesla into a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics unless he controls around 25% of the company.

Musk’s 2018 pay package, which consisted of 12 tranches of stock options, had fully vested, though he had yet to exercise any of those options.

A Tesla shareholder, Richard Tornetta, asked Delaware’s business-law court to cancel the pay deal, alleging the Tesla CEO controlled the approval process and that the board misled investors, who signed off on it. Musk has said he didn’t dictate the terms of his pay plan. The case went to trial in late 2022.

“Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” Musk tweeted Tuesday after the decision was released. An attorney for the plaintiff praised the decision.

Tesla shares fell 3.6% in after-hours trading Tuesday.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musks-55-billion-tesla-pay-package-struck-down-by-judge-3e619f53

No major income tax changes are likely in the Interim Budget 2024-25, but taxpayers can expect some changes that can help strealine the ITR filing process.

The Interim Budget 2024-25 will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1 and experts indicate that major tax changes are unlikely.

However, some incremental changes can be expected in the budget, which will help streamline the process of income tax return (ITR) filing.

One of the expected changes includes expanding the scope of the Annual Information Statement or AIS, introduced in Budget 2021. It may be noted that the Annual Information Statement (AIS) is a document introduced by the government to simplify the process for individual taxpayers to review their financial information in one place.

The primary objective of the AIS is to enable taxpayers to cross-verify the financial data provided in their income tax returns easily.

Bhavin Rajput, Director, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP, wrote in The Economic Times that the scope of AIS could be expanded to include more details such as correct value of rental income, interest on income tax refund and more.

Rajput wrote that the AIS currently reflects rental income received by individuals, particularly in cases where tenants claim House Rent Allowance (HRA) exemption. However, he noted that discrepancies may arise, especially when the monthly rental income falls below the TDS threshold.

To address this, incorporating the actual rent paid in the landlord’s AIS, sourced from corrected Form 24Q submissions by employers, would ensure accurate reporting.

On interest on income tax refund, he said the AIS captures income tax refunds along with associated interest, there is room for improvement.

“The income tax refund along with interest on such refund is captured as a consolidated amount in the AIS. The tax department in some cases deducts TDS on the interest paid on the income tax refund, then this TDS is reflected in Form 26 AS. However, in case the interest from income tax refund is not subject to TDS then individual taxpayers would be able to get this information from the intimation (received after processing of the income tax return) or Form 26AS,” Rajput wrote.

“Individuals may miss to report interest earned from income tax refund is taxable as well. This often leads to individuals not reporting the interest on income tax refund in their ITR. Interest earned on the income tax refund can also be documented within the AIS as the data is readily available with income tax department. Also, a clear breakdown between the income tax refund and the associated interest, can be provided,” he added.

Rajput also added that AIS can include details about directorships and unlisted shares. He said individuals have to report their directorships and ownership of unlisted shares held at any point during the financial year in their ITR.

Therefore, he recommended the introduction of a dedicated section within the AIS to capture this information from companies.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/budget-2024/story/interim-budget-2024-taxpayers-ais-changes-income-reporting-itr-filing-2495295-2024-01-30

Regulators put limits on Boeing 737 MAX production; grounded MAX 9 jets have resumed flying after required inspections

Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing ’s factory.

Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker’s employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 MAX 9 plug door after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter.

The increasingly likely scenario, according to some of these people, is based partly on an apparent absence of markings on the Alaska door plug itself that would suggest bolts were in place when it blew off the jet around 16,000 feet over Oregon on Jan. 5.

They also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory related to the company’s work on the plug door.

The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting metallurgical analysis of the plug door but hasn’t released the results of the testing. Laboratory tests might show whether the bolts were in place or not there at all. An update in the NTSB probe is expected as soon as this week.

New evidence could later emerge before accident investigators reach final conclusions. It couldn’t be determined how many people were involved with work on the plug door at Boeing’s 737 factory.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/signs-suggest-alaska-airlines-plane-lacked-bolts-when-it-left-boeing-factory-f0246654?st=mmbljqugy3vlo8p

The license to publish Sports Illustrated is drawing interest from at least two fresh bidders — including Jeff Zucker-backed news site Front Office Sports, The Post has learned.

In addition to Front Office Sports — minority-owned by the ex-CNN boss’s media-focused buyout firm RedBird IMI Management — Sports Illustrated’s publishing rights could also get a bid from Minute Media, which in 2019 acquired the Player’s Tribune blog founded by Derek Jeter, sources said.

The rights to publish SI went up for grabs earlier this month after its current licensee, The Arena Group, failed to make a $3.75 million quarterly fee — prompting the SI’s owner Authentic Brands Group to terminate its license.

Arena — which made headlines Jan. 19 by telling all of Sports Illustrated’s staffers they would lose their jobs because of the blowup — is still publishing SI under a 60-day contract provision, even as it scrambles to negotiate lower fees, sources said.

In October, Jeff Zucker’s Redbird IMI Management bought a minority stake in Front Office Sports, which covers the influence of sports on business and culture.

Front Office Sports could publish its articles through Sports Illustrated, a source close to the situation said. There also could be co-branding opportunities, according to the insider.

Arena — which also publishes titles including Men’s Health, TheStreet and Parade — is hoping to hang on to it after winning a reduced licensing fee, sources said.

While the auction of the SI license is early, the battered, iconic brand appears to be drawing interest, according to sources. The Post reported Jan. 19 that Penske Media and Essence also made calls about getting the license, although it is unclear whether those talks have progressed.

Authentic Brands declined to comment. Reps for Front Office Sports and Minute Media did not return calls.

Minute Media — which also owns sites Fansided and Mental Floss — would roughly double its revenue to $500 million by signing a license to publish SI, sources said. In an interview last spring with CTech, Minute Media founder and CEO Asaf Peled predicted his company would be profitable by the end of 2023.

“We are looking at acquisitions,” Peled said at the time. “We’re going to be active on that front.”

In 2019, he bought Jeter’s Players’ Tribune, a forum where players write their own stories and connect with fans.

Last week, Minute Media announced it had acquired STN Video, which has partnerships with all the major US sports leagues to enhance and monetize user engagement. Minute Media said it raised money for the deal from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

Source: https://nypost.com/2024/01/29/business/sports-illustrated-draws-interest-from-2-more-bidders-including-jeff-zuckers-front-office-sports-sources/

Zee’s tiff with Sony started soon after Sebi in June said that Goenka and his father, Chandra, had “abused their position” and siphoned off funds “for their own benefit.”

Subhash Chandra has questioned Sony’s intent behind the now scrapped $10 billion deal despite his firm’s offer to have Punit Goenka step aside from the CEO’s post.

Chandra accused Sony of intentionally scuttling the deal, threatening criminal action against the firm, the Zee Chairman Emeritus told ET in an interview.

Chandra claimed Zee met all the terms laid out in the deal it was Sony’s “strategy all along to engage with Zee and eventually withdraw, portraying Zee as vulnerable”.

The tiff started soon after Sebi in June said that Goenka and his father, Chandra, had “abused their position” and siphoned off funds “for their own benefit.”

The regulator barred them from holding any executive or director positions in listed firms while its investigation was underway.

In October, an appellate authority gave partial relief to Goenka from Sebi’s ban, allowing him to hold these positions during the probe.

Zee saw this appellate win as a green-light for Goenka to be CEO of the merged entity, but Sony disagreed.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/industry/top-story/story/im-considering-criminal-case-against-sony-subhash-chandra-on-failed-zee-deal-415122-2024-01-29

A Hong Kong court on Monday ordered the liquidation of property giant China Evergrande Group (3333.HK), opens new tab, a move likely to send ripples through China’s crumbling financial markets as policymakers scramble to contain a deepening crisis.
Justice Linda Chan decided to liquidate the world’s most indebted developer, with more than $300 billion of total liabilities, after noting Evergrande had been unable to offer a concrete restructuring plan more than two years after defaulting on a bond repayment and after several court hearings.

“It is time for the court to say enough is enough,” said Chan, who will give her detailed reasoning later on Monday.
Evergrande chief executive Siu Shawn told Chinese media the company will ensure home building projects will still be delivered despite the liquidation order. The order would not affect the operations of Evergrande’s onshore and offshore units, he added.
The decision sets the stage for what is expected to be drawn-out and complicated process with potential political considerations, given the many authorities involved. Offshore investors will be focused on how Chinese authorities treat foreign creditors when a company fails.

“It is not an end but the beginning of the prolonged process of liquidation, which will make Evergrande’s daily operations even harder,” said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis. “As most of Evergrande’s assets are in mainland China, there are uncertainties about how the creditors can seize the assets and the repayment rank of offshore bondholders, and situation can be even worse for shareholders.”

Evergrande’s shares were trading down as much as 20% before the hearing. Trading was halted in China Evergrande and its listed subsidiaries China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group (0708.HK), opens new tab and Evergrande Property Services (6666.HK), opens new tab after the verdict.
COMPLICATED PROCESS
Evergrande, which has $240 billion of assets, sent a struggling property sector into a tailspin when it defaulted on its debt in 2021 and the liquidation ruling will likely further jolt already fragile Chinese capital and property markets.
Beijing is grappling with an underperforming economy, its worst property market in nine years and a stock market wallowing near five-year lows, so any fresh jolt to investor confidence could further undermine policymakers’ efforts to rejuvenate growth.
Evergrande applied for another adjournment on Monday as its lawyer said it had made “some progress” on the restructuring proposal. In the latest offer, the developer proposed creditors swap their debts into all the shares the company holds in its two Hong Kong units, compared to stakes of about 30% in the subsidiaries ahead of the last hearing in December.
Evergrande’s lawyer argued liquidation could harm the operations of the company, and its property management and electric vehicle units, which would in turn hurt the group’s ability to repay all creditors.
Evergrande had been working on a $23 billion debt revamp plan with a group of creditors known as the ad hoc bondholder group for almost two years.
“We’re not surprised by the outcome and it’s a product of the company failing to engage with the ad hoc group,” said Fergus Saurin, a Kirkland & Ellis partner who had advised the offshore bondholders. “There has been a history of last minute engagement which has gone nowhere. And in the circumstances, the company only has itself to blame for being wound up.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/embattled-china-evergrande-back-court-liquidation-hearing-2024-01-28/

Bayer was ordered on Friday to pay $2.25 billion to a Pennsylvania man who said he developed cancer from exposure to the company’s Roundup weedkiller, the man’s attorneys said.
A jury in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas found that John McKivision’s non-Hodgkins lymphoma was the result of using Roundup for yard work at his house for a period of several years. The verdict includes $250 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages.

It is learnt that Bansal’s exit from the e-commerce firm is to avoid any form of conflict with the new venture

Binny Bansal on Saturday bid goodbye to Flipkart, the e-commerce start-up that he had founded along with Sachin Bansal in 2007.

Bansal officially resigned from the board of the now Walmart-owned firm. The US retail giant had acquired a 77 per cent controlling stake in Flipkart through a $16 billion deal in 2018.

The end of Bansal’s association with Flipkart comes after he recently floated a start-up OppDoor that provides end-to-end solutions to e-commerce firms. It is learnt that his exit from the e-commerce firm is to avoid any form of conflict with the new venture. Co-founder Sachin Bansal (who is not related to Binny) had quit the Flipkart board in 2018 after which he set up Navi, which offers financial services.

“I am proud of the Flipkart group’s achievements over the past 16 years. Flipkart is in a robust position, with a strong leadership team and a clear path forward, and with this confidence, I have decided to step aside, knowing the company is in capable hands. I wish the team the best as they continue to transform experiences for customers, and I remain a strong supporter of the business,” Bansal said.

Last year, he along with some of Flipkart’s early investors that included Tiger Global and Accel had fully exited the company by selling their remaining stakes. Walmart had then reportedly paid $1.4 billion to acquire Tiger Global’s stake valuing Flipkart at $35 billion. Bansal had received $650 million as he completely divested his residual stake which was estimated at around 1.5 per cent.

“We are thankful for Binny’s partnership over the past several years as the Flipkart group has grown and entered into new businesses. His insights have been invaluable to the board and the company. Flipkart is the outcome of a great idea and a lot of hard work, built by teams committed to transforming how India shops.

“We wish Binny the best as he embarks on his next venture and thank him for the deep impact he has enabled for the Indian retail ecosystem.” Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO and Flipkart board member, said.

According to the latest report from AllianceBernstein, Flipkart continues to dominate the e-commerce segment in India with a 48 per cent market share, while Softbank-backed Meesho has emerged as the fastest growing e-commerce platform in terms of user base.

Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/business/flipkart-co-founder-binny-bansal-exits-board-amid-new-startup-launch/cid/1996651

Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab tumbled over 12% on Thursday after CEO Elon Musk warned sales growth would slow this year despite price cuts that have already hurt margins at the world’s most valuable automaker and fueled investor concerns about soft demand and Chinese competition.

Musk said on Wednesday that growth would be “notably lower” as Tesla focuses on a cheaper, next-generation electric vehicle to be made at its Texas factory in the second half of 2025, which is expected to spark the next boom in deliveries.

But he said ramping up production of the new model would be challenging because it would involve cutting-edge technologies.

Tesla’s stock suffered its sharpest intraday percentage loss in more than a year, with $80 billion in market value wiped out on Thursday. That pushed its market capitalization loss for the month to about $210 billion.

“The Tesla headlines have essentially gone from bad to worse,” said TD Cowen analysts, noting that the fourth-quarter revenue and profit were also below expectations.

Shares of other EV makers also fell, with Rivian Automotive Inc (RIVN.O), opens new tab, Lucid Group (LCID.O), opens new tab and Fisker (FSR.N), opens new tab down between 4.7% and 8.8%.

The EV industry has been grappling with a slowdown in demand for more than a year and the price cuts by Tesla will likely worsen the pressure on the startups and automakers such as Ford (F.N), opens new tab.

“The problem for Tesla is any significant attempt to boost sales from here on will probably need to be achieved at the cost of further falls in operating margin, due to having to compete with BYD in China, as well as increased competition elsewhere,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-tumbles-after-ceo-elon-musk-warns-slower-growth-2024-2024-01-25

The economy grew at a much more rapid pace than expected while inflation eased in the final three months of 2023, as the U.S. easily skirted a recession that many forecasters had thought was inevitable, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced, increased at a 3.3% annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to data adjusted seasonally and for inflation.

That compared with the Wall Street consensus estimate for a gain of 2% in the final three months of the year. The third quarter grew at a 4.9% pace.

In addition to the better than expected GDP move, there also was some progress on inflation.

Core prices for personal consumption expenditures, which the Federal Reserve prefers as a longer-term inflation measure, rose 2% for the period, while the headline rate was 1.7%.

On an annual basis, the PCE price index rose 2.7%, down from 5.9% a year ago, while the core figure excluding food and energy posted a 3.2% increase annually, compared with 5.1%.

The two components together added up to “supersonic Goldilocks, because it’s really a strong number yet inflation hasn’t shown up,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank. “Everybody wanted to have fun. People bought new cars, a lot of recreation spending as well as taking trips. We’ve been expecting a soft landing for some time. This is just one step in that direction.”

The U.S. economy for all of 2023 accelerated at a 2.5% annualized pace, well ahead of the Wall Street outlook at the beginning of the year for few if any gains and better than the 1.9% increase in 2022.

As had been the case through the year, a strong pace of consumer spending helped drive the expansion. Personal consumption expenditures increased 2.8% for the quarter, down just slightly from the previous period.

State and local government spending also contributed, up 3.7%, as did a 2.5% increase in federal government expenditures. Gross private domestic investment rose 2.1%, another significant factor for the robust quarter.

The chain-weighted price index, which accounts for prices as well as changes in consumer behavior, increased 1.5% for the quarter, down sharply from 3.3% in the previous period and below the Wall Street estimate for a 2.5% acceleration.

“This year has been like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and the economy is knocking the blocks off the economists, always outperforming,” said Dan North, senior economist with Allianz Trade Americas. Fed Chair Jerome Powell “has got to have a smirk on his face this morning. Again, he’s defying the economists’ predictions with strong growth and inflation clearly coming under control.”

Markets showed only a modest reaction to the report. Stock futures gained slightly while Treasury yields moved lower. Futures markets continued to reflect the likelihood that the Fed will enact its first rate cut in May, though the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge put the odds of a March cut at 47.4% around 10 a.m. ET.

“It was a great report, but you didn’t see the market move much because GDP is backward-looking. It told us what happened in October and November and December,” North said. “It’s great for historical patterns, but it doesn’t really tell us much about where we’re headed.”

In other economic news Thursday, initial jobless claims totaled 214,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week and ahead of the estimate for 199,000, according to the Labor Department. Continuing claims rose to 1.833 million, an increase of 27,000.

The GDP report wraps up a year in which most economists were almost certain the U.S. would enter at least a shallow recession. Even the Fed had predicted a mild contraction due to banking industry stress last March.

However, a resilient consumer and a powerful labor market helped propel the economy through the year, which also featured an ongoing pullback in manufacturing and a Fed that kept raising interest rates in its battle to bring down inflation.

As the calendar turns a page to a new year, hopes have shifted away from a recession as markets anticipate the Fed will start cutting rates while inflation continues to drift back to its 2% goal.

Concerns remain, however, that the economy faces more challenges ahead.

Some of the worries center around the lagged effects of monetary policy, specifically the 11 interest rate hikes totaling 5.25 percentage points that the Fed approved between March 2022 and July 2023. Conventional economic wisdom is that it can take as long as two years for such policy tightening to make its way through the system, so that could contribute to slowness ahead.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/gdp-q4-2023-the-us-economy-grew-at-a-3point3percent-pace-in-the-fourth-quarter.html

Agency says Boeing cannot boost production; Alaska Airlines and United Airlines can check their grounded jets

U.S. air-safety regulators on Wednesday put limits on Boeing ’s production of 737 MAX jets, but cleared the way for grounded jets to resume flying after airlines complete inspections.

Most of Boeing’s MAX 9 jets were grounded on Jan. 6, a day after a near-catastrophe on an Alaska Airlines flight. A door plug ripped away from the plane shortly after it took off, leaving a gaping hole the size of an emergency exit in its side.

“We will not agree to any request from Boeing for an expansion in production or approve additional production lines for the 737 MAX until we are satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved,” said FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker.

The FAA said its production limits affected Boeing’s 737 MAX, not other commercial aircraft it makes. The agency said it would freeze MAX production rates at current levels. Boeing has been producing about 30 of the jets a month at its Renton, Wash., factory.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the U.S. government’s main probe of the blowout, is still investigating what caused it and might not issue its conclusions for months.

Before they are allowed to fly again, the FAA said, MAX 9 jets will go through a more rigorous maintenance process that includes inspection of specific bolts, guide tracks and fittings and detailed visual inspection of both door plugs. Carriers will also need to tighten fasteners and fix any problems they find.

Whitaker said the “exhaustive, enhanced” review, which included scrutiny from a board of safety experts, has given the FAA confidence to allow the work to go forward.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/faa-clears-path-for-boeing-737-max-9-to-resume-flying-ccbdb6d4?st=ryygf7kjvff0e7z

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), opens new tab on Tuesday said it had reached a tentative settlement to resolve probes by U.S. states into whether it misled consumers about the safety of its talc products, which thousands of lawsuits claim can cause cancer.
The deal includes 42 states and Washington, D.C. The company tentatively agreed to pay about $700 million to settle the states’ claims, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Consistent with the plan we outlined last year, the company continues to pursue several paths to achieve a comprehensive and final resolution of the talc litigation,” Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement.
The settlement does not extend to private plaintiffs’ cases against the company, some of which are expected to go to trial later this year.
J&J has maintained that its now-discontinued talc products are safe and do not cause cancer. It previously set aside $400 million to resolve state claims.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-agrees-resolve-42-us-states-talc-investigations-2024-01-23/

Arrest is the latest episode in the viral craze over the water bottles

The Stanley cup craze has taken a criminal turn.

A 23-year-old Sacramento, Calif., woman was arrested after allegedly stealing nearly $2,500 worth of Stanley cups from a retail store, local police said. The woman allegedly filled her shopping cart with Stanley Quenchers—the insulated cups that have thrown social media into a frenzy in recent months—and left without paying last week.

When police tracked her down, they found her car filled with 65 of the cups, according to Lt. Chris Ciampa of the Roseville Police Department. She was arrested on charges of grand theft and driving under the influence, Ciampa said.

The arrest was the latest episode in the viral craze over the water bottles. The stainless-steel tumblers—the popular, 40-ounce version of which sells for $45—have become a status symbol for many women and teens, sparking chaos at retailers and launching a resale market where certain colors sell for more than $200 apiece. The hashtag #stanleytumbler has more than a billion views on TikTok and has been used more than 180,000 times on Instagram.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/woman-arrested-for-allegedly-stealing-2-500-of-stanley-drinking-cups-69d7a05a?st=9a8m5owzavdpfd6

India’s net direct tax collections jumped 160.52 per cent to Rs 16,63,686 crore in 10 years between financial years 2022-23 and 2013-14.

The country’s net direct tax collections had stood at Rs 6,38,596 crore in the financial year 2013-14.

“Gross direct tax collections of Rs 19,72,248 crore in FY 2022-23 have registered an increase of over 173.31 per cent compared to gross direct tax collections of Rs 7,21,604 crore in FY 2013-14,” the finance ministry said in a statement.

India’s direct tax-to-GDP ratio has increased from 5.62 per cent in FY 2013-14 to 6.11 per cent in FY 2022-23.

Source: https://www.news18.com/business/indias-net-direct-tax-collections-jump-160-5-in-10-years-tax-mop-up-at-rs-16-6-lakh-crore-in-fy23-8751968.html

U.S. stocks closed higher on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing above the 38,000 milestone for the first time in history as fourth-quarter earnings season ramps up.

What happened

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA went up 138.01 points or 0.4% to end at 38,001.81, its third record close this year, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It is also the first time the index has closed above 38,000 in history.
• The S&P 500 SPX rose 10.62 points or 0.2% to finish at 4,850.43, its second record close in 2024.
• The Nasdaq Composite COMP advanced 49.32 points or 0.3% to end at 15,360.29, its highest finish since Jan. 4, 2022.

What drove markets

Including Monday, it has been 25 trading days since the last 1,000-point milestone for the Dow, which is the shortest time between milestones since the period between 33,000 and 34,000, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Of course, such milestones are less impressive on a percentage basis the higher the blue-chip index rises, with the move from 37,000 to 38,000 representing a 2.7% rise.

India’s stock market capitalization crossed $4 trillion for the first time on December 5, with about half of that coming in the past four years.

India’s stock market has pipped Hong Kong for the first time. The combined value of shares listed on Indian exchanges hit $4.33 trillion as of Monday’s close, against $4.29 trillion for Hong Kong, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, making India the fourth-biggest equity market globally.

Its stock market capitalization crossed $4 trillion for the first time on December 5, with about half of that coming in the past four years.

“India has all the right ingredients in place to set the growth momentum further,” Ashish Gupta, chief investment officer at Axis Mutual Fund in Mumbai, told Bloomberg.

Hong Kong’s slump is also due to an eroding China appeal. Some of China’s most influential and innovative firms are listed in Hong Kong. Beijing’s stringent anti-Covid-19 curbs, regulatory crackdowns on corporations, a property-sector crisis and geopolitical tensions with the West have hit Chinese stocks hard.

The total market value of Chinese and Hong Kong stocks have tumbled by more than $6 trillion since their peaks in 2021. New listings have dried up in Hong Kong, with the Asian financial hub losing its status as one of the world’s busiest venues for initial public offerings.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/global-markets/story/india-overtakes-hong-kong-as-worlds-fourth-largest-stock-market-414471-2024-01-23

Sony cited conditions of the merger agreement not being met as the reason for the termination, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Sony has called off the $10 billion merger between its India unit and Zee, ending a two-year stalemate, Bloomberg has reported.

Sony reportedly sent a termination letter to Zee early Monday and is expected to disclose the same to the exchange. Sony has cited “conditions of the merger agreement not met” as the reason to scrap the deal.

The termination follows a stalemate between the companies over whether Zee’s Chief Executive Officer Punit Goenka would lead the merged entity amid a probe into his conduct by SEBI. The standoff now appears to have scuttled the deal, which would have created a $10 billion media giant with the financial muscle to take on global powerhouses Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

The termination letter from Sony came after a 30-day grace period ended over the weekend when the two sides couldn’t reach an agreement on a deadline set in late December. This created an eleventh-hour tussle in the two-year-old merger plan that has already seen its fair share of drama and delays.

Sony and Zee entered into a merger agreement to create a media behemoth with the massive viewership and pricing power in the country of over 1.4 billion people.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/sony-calls-off-10-billion-merger-with-zee-ending-2-yr-stalemate-414339-2024-01-22

Portland, Ore., officials and retail executives spent months debating how to tamp down thefts and address quality-of-life issues

Target, Nike, and REI all complained about crime in Portland privately before announcing plans to close stores in the city in 2023.

The closures followed months—and in some cases years—of negotiations between company officials and the city over getting additional police patrols near their locations, improving response times and removing homeless encampments, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Ultimately the companies said the city didn’t provide enough support and they decided to shutter those locations, emails show.

The correspondence illustrates the behind-the-scenes tensions between the public and private sectors over how to address retail crime. Retailers boost the city’s economy, but limited resources hinder local leaders’ ability to satisfy the demands of each company. Oregon’s largest city has struggled with a rise in violent crimes, homelessness and a decline in its population.

Shoplifting rates in Portland were up 22% in the first half of 2023 when compared with the same period in 2019, according to a Journal analysis of city crime data. The increase in Portland’s shoplifting rate over the period was well above the average among 24 cities studied by the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank.

Industry executives have lobbied for increased collaboration with law enforcement, saying that rising retail crime rates are hurting store safety and company profits. Companies are locking up more products to tamp down theft, and some are conducting their own investigations to identify suspects. This month, the governors of California and New York called for new legislation to combat retail crime, including measures that would add or expand criminal penalties on people who profit from theft or assault retail workers.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/portland-oregon-retailers-rei-nike-target-fd4dd063?reflink=integratedwebview_share

Benchmark surpasses its previous high set two years ago

A rally in technology stocks propelled the S&P 500 to an all-time high Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 1.2% to 4839.81, breaking a streak of more than 500 trading sessions without a new record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 395 points, or 1.1%, to close at 37863.80, also a record. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.7%.

Shares of tech companies led the charge higher. An upbeat earnings report this week from chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company spurred a resurgence in semiconductor stocks like Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom . The PHLX Semiconductor Index gained 4%. Shares of Apple , which uses TSMC chips, rose 1.6%.

“That earnings report took the leash off the bull,” said Jeff Kilburg, founder and CEO of KKM Financial. “All we needed was a spark to get the S&P 500 back into positive territory.”

The recent comeback in shares of chip makers echoes the excitement around artificial-intelligence companies that boosted the stock market last year. Since the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are weighted by market capitalizations, shares of big tech companies have an outsize influence on index performance.

“We’ve seen a resumption of leadership in technology stocks again here over the back half of this week,” Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.

U.S. stocks stumbled at the beginning of this year after the S&P 500’s 24% gain in 2023. Investor optimism about how quickly the Federal Reserve might pivot to cutting interest rates has waned. Traders are pricing in a roughly 46% probability that the Fed will reduce rates at its March policy meeting, down from 68% one month ago, according to federal-funds futures.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/global-stocks-markets-dow-news-01-19-2024-1480a097

A media report on Thursday suggested that both Culver Max Entertainment Private Limited (erstwhile Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited) and ZEE held discussions for the merger completion and that Punit Goenka offered to give up the chief executive role for the merged entity.

Sony Group Corp has reportedly called for a board meeting today to decide on the $10 billion merger with Zee Enterprises.

Two key meetings are expected to happen as per an ET report where a final call will be taken. ET said Sony is likely to call off the deal unless Puneet Goenka, ZEE MD and chief executive, agrees to the merger contours laid out.

A media report on Thursday suggested that both Culver Max Entertainment Private Limited (erstwhile Sony Pictures Networks India Private Limited) and ZEE held discussions for the merger completion and that Punit Goenka offered to give up the chief executive role for the merged entity.

The Sony-Zee combine aimed to create a media behemoth with the financial muscle to take on global powerhouses Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. as well as local heavyweights like Reliance.

Sony is reportedly not keen on any hostile takeover.

ZEE may file a suit against Culver Max Entertainment claiming damages if the merger fails to go through by January 20, a report said.

Zee reportedly was compelled to close down certain lucrative ventures in order to adhere to the merger conditions imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI). If the merger fails at this stage, it will be a huge loss for Zee.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/deals/story/fate-of-10-bn-zee-sony-deal-could-be-decided-today-heres-what-you-should-know-414025-2024-01-19

On Wednesday, the Adani Group of companies signed four memorandums of understanding (MoU) for investments of over Rs 12,400 crore in Telangana at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/telangana/adani-group-pledges-rs-12400-cr-investment-in-congress-ruled-telangana-2852973

Google has laid off over a thousand employees across various departments since January 10th. CEO Sundar Pichai’s message is to brace for more cuts.

“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” Pichai told all Google employees on Wednesday in an internal memo, part of which was shared with me. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”

So far, those “tough choices” have included layoffs and reorganizations in Google’s hardware, ad sales, search, shopping, maps, policy, core engineering, and YouTube teams.

“These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team,” Pichai wrote in his memo — a reference to when Google cut 12,000 jobs this time last year. “But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”

Pichai said the layoffs this year were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.” He confirmed what many inside Google have been fearing: that more “role eliminations” are to come.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/17/24042417/google-layoffs-2024-internal-employee-memo-sundar-pichai

HDFC Bank Q3 Results Highlights: HDFC Bank net interest income came in at ₹28,470 crore in the December quarter, reporting a growth of 24 per cent year-on-year.

HDFC Bank Q3 Results Highlights: HDFC Bank announced its October-December quarter results for fiscal 2023-24 (Q3FY24) today, January 16. India’s largest private sector lender reported a growth of 33 per cent in net profit at ₹16,372 crore, compared to ₹12, 259 crore in the year-ago period. HDFC Bank’s net interest income came in at ₹28,470 crore in the December quarter, reporting a growth of 24 per cent year-on-year.

HDFC Bank share price has gained over nine per cent in the past three months and just over 5.5 per cent in one year. This is against Nifty 50’s 12 per cent rally in three months and more than 23 per cent surge in one year. Meanwhile, Bank Nifty has risen over nine per cent in three months and 14.5 per cent in one year.

Source: https://www.livemint.com/companies/company-results/hdfc-bank-q3-results-live-updates-hdfc-bank-results-2023-hdfc-bank-shares-hdfc-bank-q3-earnings-16-january-2024-11705377041721.html

Toy makers grappling with surging costs in China are finding no easy options when it comes to shifting production to cheaper centres elsewhere.

Six years ago, monopoly maker Hasbro (HAS.O) approached Indian durable goods and aerospace supplier Aequs to sub-contract.

“They said if you can get into toy manufacturing, now we’re looking to shift millions of dollars worth of product from China to India,” Rohit Hegde, Aequs’ head of consumer verticals, told Reuters. “We said: as long as we can get at least about $100 million of business in the next few years, we can definitely invest in it.”

Fast forward to today and Aequs makes dozens of types of toys for Hasbro and others including Spin Master (TOY.TO) in two 350,000-square-foot facilities in Belgaum, India.

But Hegde and other manufacturers acknowledge that India and other countries cannot match China for efficiency, limiting companies’ efforts to shift to lower cost bases and raising the risk of higher toy prices in future if the bulk of production remains in China.

“We don’t have the port facilities (in India) that China does. We don’t have the road facilities that China does. They have been doing this for the last 30 years, their efficiency levels are much better than ours,” Hedge said.

Still, for toy manufacturers including Hasbro and Barbie doll maker Mattel (MAT.O), the risks of relying on China for most of their production were highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Chinese ports struggled to export goods and were periodically shut down, leaving shipments stranded.

Soaring labour costs in China had already been driving manufacturers across industries to diversify production geographically.

A report by Rhodium Group last September showed that total announced U.S. and European greenfield investment into India shot up by $65 billion or 400% between 2021 and 2022, while investment into China dropped to less than $20 billion in 2022, from a peak of $120 billion in 2018. Mexico, Vietnam and Malaysia also drew some of this redirected capital.

Yet toymakers are struggling to shift production even as other industries succeed.

As of the first seven months of last year, mainland China still made 79% of toys sold in the United States and Europe, versus 82% in 2019, according to U.S. and European Union import data provided to Reuters by S&P Global Market Intelligence’s trade data service Panjiva.

In comparison, mainland China in 2019 accounted for 35% of U.S. and EU apparel imports. This reduced to just 30% in the year to July 31, with India and Mexico the biggest beneficiaries.

“Is it easy to re-shore away from mainland China? No, it isn’t. That goes double for toys,” S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Chris Rogers said. “It’s more complicated because they’re highly seasonal — you’re asking a partner to sit on inventory for most of the year. Toy makers also have to be doubly rigorous on safety, sourcing and making sure workers are treated well.”

While China’s minimum wage varies from between 1,420 yuan per month to 2,690 yuan per month ($198.52-$376.08), in India unskilled and semi-skilled workers can be secured for between 9,000 Indian rupees and 15,000 Indian rupees a month ($108.04- $180.06), according to central bank estimates.

But setting up to source from other countries can take 18 months if a company is buying product from a contract manufacturer, and up to three years if a firm is building a new factory from scratch, Rogers said.

Toys to be sold in the autumn go into production starting in May and are then stored or shipped.

‘MORE REASONABLE COST’
Hasbro began addressing its outsized dependence on China as an operational risk in its annual report in 2018, while Mattel has reportedly been shifting away from China since 2007, when it had to recall millions of toys tainted with lead paint. Efforts across the industry have ramped up since the pandemic.

Hasbro did not respond to a request for comment, while Mattel declined to comment for this story.

Spiralling Chinese wages are helping push up toy prices. In the UK, for instance, prices rose by about 8% in the first six months of 2022, according to Circana, formerly known as NPD. The risk for consumers is that prices will keep on rising sharply if manufacturers can’t cut costs by moving to cheaper production centres.

Though U.S. duties on Chinese toys are currently negligible, that could also change as some Republican politicians have called for revoking China’s “permanent normal trade relations” status. Such a move could raise the price of toys in the United States by more than a fifth, according to the National Retail Federation.

“We are all looking at derisking China,” said Nic Aldridge, managing director at Bandai UK, the maker of Tamagotchi virtual pets (7832.T). “Raw materials costs have gone up a lot in China, we’re looking for places where we could get a more reasonable cost.”

Bandai still mostly manufactures in mainland China but some of its products are made in Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam. It is looking at India and Thailand as additional locations, Aldridge said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/toy-manufacturers-shift-china-is-no-childs-play-2024-01-15/

Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea would negatively impact oil-importing countries, including India, where a $10-20 increase in oil prices would be harmful to its economy, according to World Economic Forum (WEF) president Borge Brende.

The ongoing tensions in the Red Sea due to recurrent attacks on merchant ships by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have a negative impact on the global supply chain and would lead to a $10-20 increase in oil prices for oil-importing countries like India, which could have negative effects on its economy, World Economic Forum (WEF) president Borge Brende said.

In an exclusive interview to India Today TV/Business Today with News Director Rahul Kanwal, Brende stated that the closure of the Suez Canal would hurt the global supply chain and hoped that the Houthi attacks in the region would stop very soon.

He made the remarks as the 54th edition of the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting is set to begin today in the picturesque city of Davos in Switzerland.

During the interview, Brende highlighted that trade growth came down to 0.8 per cent last year compared to 3.4 per cent. He, however, expressed optimism that global trade will “pick up a bit” this year amid the Red Sea crisis.

“But it doesn’t take much to also have a negative impact on this if we close the Red Sea. The fact that even closing the Suez Canal for weeks will also have a very negative impact on the global supply chain. So, a lot is at stake. We also know that this has an impact on oil prices and for big oil-importing countries like, for example, India, where a $10-20 increase in oil prices will have very negative effects on the economy,” he said.

“So, I hope that this will not escalate further and that shipping can reconvene as usual in the Red Sea in a few days,” he said.

‘INDIAN ECONOMY TO GROW AT 8%’
Borde expressed optimism about the Indian economy and said it was expected to grow at 8 per cent this year. “We think, in the coming decade, we can be speaking about a $10 trillion economy, at least in the coming two decades,” he said.

Praising India for its growth story, the WEF chief said the country was growing in the digital economy twice as fast as the rest of the economy.

“India has been at the forefront due to the digital economy and the export of services. This is a very sweet spot for India. But, of course, reforms should have to continue in India. Reforms related to education, funding and reforms to tackle unnecessary red tape should continue. I feel there is an understanding of all these things in New Delhi,” Brende said.

‘LOOK FOR A BIGGER ROOM’
Acknowledging the rising global stature of India, Brende cited an instance where there was a “long waiting list” of Indian officials waiting to meet him in a room that could fit only “100 people”.

“We have a lot of Indian companies here. India is growing very fast. There’s a lot of interest in India. There is like a country strategy meeting on India where the three ministers that are here will conduct, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor is here too. I was told by my team that it was oversubscribed after half an hour. So, there’s like a long waiting list,” he said.

“I think we can only fit 100 of them in the room. They are still waiting and they can’t get in and they are upset. So, I said, maybe we will have to look for a bigger room,” he chuckled.

ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, INDIA’S ECONOMY
Brende said the WEF projected a 2.9 per cent economic growth this year but was optimistic that it could go above 3 per cent soon.

“We should also acknowledge that a lot of economists expected a recession in the US. It’s the largest economy in the world that is 25 per cent of the GDP. There is no recession. It’s probably a soft landing. We’re seeing influence abating a bit. Interest rates will then go down,” he said.

“For India, I think if trade grows again and India gets a little bit more help from the global economy in 2025, I think, as I said, that India will be in a medium-term to long-term, a $10-trillion economy, provided that the reforms do continue,” he said.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/houthi-attacks-red-sea-merchant-ships-india-economy-oil-prices-world-economic-forum-davos-2488631-2024-01-14

Net Profit stood at Rs. 737 crore for Q3FY24, as compared to Rs. 641 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. PAT margin stood at 5.5 per cent in Q3FY24 as compared to 5.7 per cent in Q3FY23.

Avenue Supermarts Ltd. (ASL) also known as DMart, one of the largest food & grocery retailers in India, announced its standalone and consolidated financial results for the quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2023, the company on Saturday announced through an exchange filing.

Standalone results

Total Revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 stood at Rs.13,247 crore, as compared to Rs.11,305 crore in the same period last year. Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) in Q3FY24 stood at Rs.1,121 crore, as compared to Rs. 974 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. EBITDA margin stood at 8.5 per cent in Q3FY24 as compared to 8.6 per cent in Q3FY23.

Net Profit stood at Rs. 737 crore for Q3FY24, as compared to Rs. 641 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. PAT margin stood at 5.5 per cent in Q3FY24 as compared to 5.7 per cent in Q3FY23.

Basic Earnings per share (EPS) for Q3FY24 stood at Rs.11.32, as compared to Rs.9.90 for Q3FY23.

Total Revenue for 9MFY24 stood at Rs. 37,139 crore, as compared to Rs. 31,496 crore in the same period last year. Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) in 9MFY24 stood at Rs. 3,159 crore, as compared to Rs. 2,877 crore during 9MFY23. EBITDA margin stood at 8.5 per cent in 9MFY24 as compared to 9.1 per cent in 9MFY23.

Net Profit stood at Rs.2,091 crore for 9MFY24, as compared to Rs. 2,051 crore in 9MFY23. PAT margin stood at 5.6 per cent in 9MFY24 as compared to 6.5 per cent in 9MFY23.

Basic Earnings per share (EPS) for 9MFY24 stood at Rs.32.15, as compared to Rs.31.67 for 9MFY23.

Consolidated results

Total Revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 stood at Rs. 13,572 crore, as compared to Rs.11,569 crore in the same period last year. Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) in Q3FY24 stood at Rs. 1,120 crore, as compared to Rs. 965 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. EBITDA margin stood at 8.3 per cent in Q3FY24 as compared to 8.3 per cent in Q3FY23.

Net Profit stood at Rs. 690 crore for Q3FY24, as compared to Rs. 590 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. PAT margin stood at 5.1 per cent in Q3FY24 as compared to 5.1 per cent in Q3FY23.

Basic Earnings per share (EPS) for Q3FY24 stood at Rs. 10.62, as compared to Rs. 9.10 for Q3FY23.

Source: https://www.freepressjournal.in/business/dmart-standalone-total-revenue-up-by-172-at-13247-cr-in-q3fy24

As per the Finance Minister’s own words, this will be a vote-on-account rather than an Interim Budget. Though we use these two interchangeably, there are some differences between them.

“It is a matter of truth that the February 1, 2024, Budget that will be just be a vote on account… we will be in election mode… so the Budget will just be to meet the expenditure no spectacular announcements are made at that time” – Nirmala Sitharaman

The Finance Minister is all set to present her sixth Budget in a row on February 1, 2024. Since it is general elections year, the outgoing government will be allowed only to present an Interim Budget or Vote-on-account instead of a regular full Budget. Up on presenting, the Finance Minister will become the first woman finance minister to have presented six Budgets including an Interim Budget and surpass her ‘Guru’ late Arun Jaitley. A regular full Budget is likely to be tabled in July after the newly elected government takes charge.

As per the Finance Minister’s own words, this will be a vote-on-account rather than an Interim Budget. Though we use these two interchangeably, there are some differences between them. An interim Budget generally includes the current state of the economy, plan and non-plan expenditures and receipts, changes in tax rates, revised estimates of the current financial year and estimates for the coming financial year and in the latter case, the Parliament passes Vote-on-account to meet the essential expenditures such as salaries of central government staff, funding of ongoing projects, and other government expenditures. In other words, it accounts only expenditures to be bared by the outgoing government for a period of two months, which may be extended to four months on special circumstances.

Like a full Budget, an interim Budget will be discussed and passed in the Lok Sabha and in the case of vote-on-account, it will be passed without any formal discussion as such. An interim Budget can propose changes in the tax regime whereas the vote-on-account cannot change the tax regime under any circumstances. It is a Parliamentary approval for withdrawing money from the Consolidated Fund of India from April to June/July or until the new Government presents its full-fledged Budget. It can be termed as an advance grant, interim arrangement and authorisation for the outgoing government to draw the money from the above-said fund and meet short-term expenditures. As far as validity is concerned, interim Budget is valid throughout a year whereas vote-on-account is valid only for a period of two to four months.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/union-budget/story/union-budget-2024-what-is-the-difference-between-an-interim-budget-and-vote-on-account-413162-2024-01-14

The last opportunity to file ITR for the financial year 2022-23 was December 31. If you missed the initial deadline on July 31, 2023, December 31 was your last chance. But don’t worry if you missed that too – there’s still a way to avoid trouble with the Income Tax department.

Filing your Income Tax Returns (ITR) is an essential task, and missing the deadline can lead to various consequences. The last opportunity to file ITR for the financial year 2022-23 was December 31. If you missed the initial deadline on July 31, 2023, December 31 was your last chance. But don’t worry if you missed that too – there’s still a way to avoid trouble with the Income Tax department.

Here Is How You Can Avoid Tax Trouble

Request for Condonation of Delay

If you have valid reasons for missing the deadline, you can apply for a condonation of delay from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) under Section 119 of the Act. This provision offers relief to taxpayers who file their ITR late. To avail of this, submit a request for condonation of the delay through the e-filing portal.

The income tax officers will review your request, and if they find it acceptable, you get a second chance to file your ITR. While there’s no specific deadline for the condonation request, it’s crucial to file it as soon as you realise the delay.

However, there’s no guarantee that your condonation request will be accepted. It’s entirely at the discretion of the Income Tax Department. If they believe your reasons for the delay are genuine, they might grant you a condonation of the delay.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/income-tax/itr-filing-missed-deadline-how-to-avoid-tax-trouble-explained-article-106828220 

The world’s fifth-largest economy is tipped to become the third-biggest by 2027, according to the International Monetary Fund, with the country seeing rising spending power among its middle-class, benefiting firms with premium brands in leisure, jewelry, out-of-home food and healthcare.

Shoppers are increasingly turning to secondhand websites to sell barely-used designer clothes and handbags. Big brands aren’t happy about it.

As much as luxury companies would love to stamp out the secondhand trade in their products, it’s an impossible task. All the better for fashionistas and investors, who can both benefit from this booming business.

Shoppers have splashed out $1.3 trillion on new luxury handbags, clothes, watches and jewels over the past four years alone. At least some of that stuff will find its way onto secondhand websites. While in the past, unworn luxury goods would gather dust at the back of consumers’ wardrobes, the rise of online luxury resellers like The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective has made it easy for millions of people to sell their designer goods for cash.

Secondhand luxury products worth 45 billion euros, or $49.3 billion at current exchange rates, were sold worldwide in 2023, based on Bain & Company estimates. The resale market has roughly doubled in size in four years and is now equivalent to 12% of the value of the market for new personal luxury goods.

That is big enough for designers to sit up and take notice. Brands have legitimate worries that fakes may be passed off as the real thing on secondhand websites, some of which don’t have stringent authentication checks. But they also dislike how easy it has become for consumers to see which goods keep their value and which ones don’t. “I think brands are watching their resale value very closely,” says Sasha Skoda, The RealReal’s senior director of merchandising. “They are curious to figure out how they can get more data around it.”

For a handful of luxury companies, resale values are flattering as buyers pay up to avoid waiting lists. On average, used Hermès handbags are 25% more expensive than new ones, and scarce designs get an even higher premium. A basic Birkin 25 bag, which costs roughly $10,000 to buy new in one of Hermès’ U.S. boutiques, will set shoppers back $24,000 or more from major resale dealers like Privé Porter. Similarly, used watches made by Rolex and Patek Philippe sell at average premiums of 20% and 39%, respectively, based on data from WatchCharts.

But most labels show wear and tear at resale. Handbags made by Louis Vuitton lose 40% of their value on average when they are resold, according to data from The RealReal. Christian Dior’s bags almost halve in value.

Some investors are buying detailed data from the likes of WatchCharts to get cues about which stocks to purchase or avoid. For example, although Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet are all privately owned businesses, strong resale values are usually a good omen for Watches of Switzerland. The U.K.-listed luxury watch retailer gets 60% of its revenue from sales of the three coveted brands.

Resale data also provides early clues about whether or not brand makeovers are working. The secondhand value of goods from Italian luxury label Salvatore Ferragamo, which is in the middle of a revamp, has jumped on The RealReal over the past year. In contrast, Burberry’s average resale value has fallen 17%. This isn’t a good sign for the brand, which in late 2022 hired new creative director Daniel Lee to improve lackluster sales.

The top brands of Paris-listed luxury group Kering also look weak. It owns Gucci, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta, whose used values have slipped 10%, 14% and 23% respectively over the past year.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/luxury-hand-me-downs-are-now-worth-billions-of-dollars-68d8ad6b?reflink=integratedwebview_share

In the last nine sessions, mutual funds lost around Rs 1,460 crore and foreign investors around Rs 2,936 crore following the steep fall in the stock price

Mutual funds lost over Rs 940 crore and foreign investors Rs 1,885 crore on January 11 as the Polycab India Ltd share crashed over 21 percent after the income-tax department said it unearthed “unaccounted cash sales” of about Rs 1,000 crore during a search of the company’s offices the previous day.

In the last nine sessions, mutual funds have lost around Rs 1,460 crore and foreign investors around Rs 2,936 crore as the stock declined 29.1 percent during the period following corporate governance and income-tax issues.

Mutual funds held around 90.93 lakh shares, or 6.06 percent, stake in Polycab India, the September quarter shareholding data shows. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) held around 1.82 crore shares, or 12.13 percent stake, in the firm.

According to latest bulk deal data, foreign investor Smallcap World Fund sold 8.51 lakh shares or 0.57 percent stake in the company at Rs 3,599.87 apiece. The total value of the transaction comes at Rs 336.64 crore.

Polycab made undisclosed cash sales of around Rs 1,000 crore and it found credible evidence found during searches, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said on January 11.

The revelation is expected to impact the stock in the medium term, leading to a de-rating on valuations that expanded to 37x in 2023. Nuvama Institutional Equities said a below 14-15 percent revenue growth in the third quarter may trigger further negativity. The company will share its third quarter results next week.

The brokerage also warned that the development puts valuations of the entire cables and wires sector at risk, as the market may fear similar practices among other players in the near term.

Source: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/markets/polycab-crash-costs-mfs-rs-940-crore-fiis-rs-1885-crore-12038361.html

According to the data from Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mukesh Ambani added $2.76 billion in the previous trading session, which took his wealth beyond $102 billion level.

Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), joined the elite club of centi-billionaires – global tycoons having a net worth of at least $100 billion. Ambani’s wealth swelled after Reliance Industries Ltd hit new record highs on Thursday and other group companies rose sharply of late.

According to the data available with Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mukesh Ambani added $2.76 billion in the previous trading session as his wealth stood at $102 billion. He currently stands at 12th spot. Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim is merely $1 billion ahead of Ambani. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index has only a dozen centi-billionaires.

Shares of Reliance Industries gained about 3 per cent to Rs 2,724.95 during Thursday’s trading session, before eventually settling at Rs 2,718.40, up 2.58 per cent. The total market capitalisation of RIL stood Rs 18.40 lakh crore mark. The stock is up 5 per cent in the last two trading sessions, while it has gained 12 per cent in the last one month.

Recently, the demerged NFBC Jio Financial Services (JFSL) also added to the recent rise in Mukesh Ambani’s fortunes. The NBFC gained more than 4.6 per cent to close Rs 251.50 on Thursday, with a total market capitalisation close to Rs 1.6 lakh crore on BSE.

Other listed entities from Ambani’s kitty have also been on a roll lately. Network18 Media Investment Ltd advanced another 10 per cent on Thursday to close at Rs 130.81. The media counter has rallied about 45 per cent in the year 2024 so far.

TV18 Broadcast Ltd managed to end higher on Thursday. The stock has gained more than 20 per cent in the last five trading sessions, with its mcap surpassing Rs 11,100 crore mark. Similarly, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd (RIIL) gained over 7.2 per cent to Rs 1515.65. The stock is up about 35 per cent in a month.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/company-stock/story/reliance-industries-shares-rally-mukesh-ambani-enters-100-billion-club-412918-2024-01-12

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

Hertz expects to take a loss of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs, an average of about $12,250, per vehicle the company said in an SEC filing.

While Hertz isn’t directly pointing a finger, it appears that Tesla has been largely to blame.

Tesla makes up about 80% of Hertz’s EV fleet, and, altogether, EVs make up about 11% of Hertz’s total rental fleet. Tesla has been aggressively cutting its vehicle prices leading other automakers to do the same for their electric vehicles. When automakers reduce the prices of new vehicles, that pushes down the value of those models in the used car market, causing rapid depreciation.

For rental car companies like Hertz, which sell lots of vehicles in the used car market, depreciation has a big impact on their business, and is a major factor when deciding which cars to have in their fleets.

Being a relatively new company, Tesla doesn’t have as many replacement parts at hand and trained repair technicians that other car companies have, Hertz executives have said, making it costly and time-consuming to get repairs.

Remember, in the likes of GM and other [automakers], there’s decades of establishment of a broad national parts supply network’” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call. “There’s an aftermarket of parts that is there, that is less mature, obviously, in the context of Tesla.”

Besides costing more to repair when they’re damaged in a crash, Scherr also said, EVs are also getting in more crashes. Again, Teslas, which make up 80% of Hertz’s EV rental fleet, are mostly the problem in both these areas, he has said.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html

Market value of Apple and Microsoft

Microsoft has overtaken Apple as the largest U.S. company by market value.

Why it matters: It’s a potential changing of the guard among tech titans.

The big picture: Microsoft has briefly overtaken Apple as the most valuable U.S. company on a couple of occasions since COVID hit.

Microsoft’s recent romp higher — it’s up more than 60% over the last 12 months, compared to Apple’s 38% — reflects the fact that it’s seen as well positioned for the AI boom that many investors view as a near certainty.
State of play: Microsoft was roughly flat on Thursday while Apple had slipped by about 0.8% shortly before noon.

If this holds through the market’s close, Microsoft will edge past Apple’s market valuation.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/11/microsoft-overtakes-apple-largest-us-company

Food industry rallies to defend processing; changes could ‘rock the world’ of manufacturers

Move over GMOs and high-fructose corn syrup. There is a new phrase making the food industry pucker: ultra-processed foods.

A battle is brewing over the latest term for many packaged food products that manufacturers fear could infiltrate U.S. food policy and scare off consumers.

Food-industry groups and makers of goods from ice cream to pasta sauce are stepping up lobbying, pushing back as the U.S. government probes the health effects of heavily processed food. It is a new front in a struggle that could reshape America’s approach to nutrition and threaten profits for companies behind foods throughout much of the supermarket.

Opposition to ultra-processed foods—your frozen pizza, potato chips and other mass-produced goods made with industrial ingredients and additives—is gaining steam worldwide. Scientists are still studying why diets high in ultra-processed foods have been tied to health problems, and any potential U.S. policies could be years away.

The foods are facing rising scrutiny as concerns grow over their outsize role in American diets. They are under review ahead of the next dietary guidelines, the every-five-years advice from regulators on what Americans should eat. Federal researchers are studying the foods, and lawmakers are holding hearings highlighting possible health risks.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/is-americas-ultra-processed-diet-that-bad-big-food-fights-back-c54e1980

David Calhoun tells staff Boeing needs to address fallout, shouldn’t speculate about what caused Alaska Airlines blowout

Boeing CEO David Calhoun said the company needs to acknowledge its mistake as the aircraft maker reels from a door-plug failure that has resulted in roughly 170 of its planes being grounded and spooked its customers.

In his first remarks since the harrowing accident, Calhoun indicated a misstep by the aircraft maker played a role. “We are gonna approach this—No. 1—acknowledging our mistake,” Calhoun said Tuesday in an address to employees just days after the incident on an Alaska Airlines flight.

“We’re gonna approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way,” he said. “We are going to work with the [National Transportation Safety Board] who is investigating the accident itself to find out what the cause is.”

Calhoun didn’t specify what mistake he was referring to, and other executives who spoke cautioned against speculation. Boeing declined to elaborate. The Journal reviewed audio of their remarks at an all-hands meeting at the 737 factory in Renton, Wash.

Regulators have grounded about 170 Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes since Saturday after a door plug detached from a MAX 9 jet at 16,000 feet, leaving the plane flying with a gaping hole. United Airlines and Alaska Airlines said they have found other MAX 9 planes with loose parts as they check the grounded fleet.

Boeing executives said airlines are shaken by the incident. “Moments like this shake them to the bone, just like it shook me,” Calhoun said in the meeting. “They have confidence in all of us—they do—and they will again.”

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/boeing-ceo-says-company-needs-to-acknowledge-our-mistake-38bb1194?st=5enze8qz75g51u6

Some executives and board members fear the billionaire’s use of drugs—including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine—could harm his companies

Elon Musk and his supporters offer several explanations for his contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics. They’re an expression of his creativity. Or the result of his mental-health challenges. Or fallout from his stress, or sleep deprivation.

In recent years, some executives and board members at his companies and others close to the billionaire have developed a persistent concern that there is another component driving his behavior: his use of drugs.

And they fear the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive’s drug use could have major consequences not just for his health, but also the six companies and billions in assets he oversees, according to people familiar with Musk and the companies.

The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine.

In 2018, for example, he took multiple tabs of acid at a party he hosted in Los Angeles. The next year he partied on magic mushrooms at an event in Mexico. In 2021, he took ketamine recreationally with his brother, Kimbal Musk, in Miami at a house party during Art Basel. He has taken illegal drugs with current SpaceX and former Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson.

People close to Musk, who is now 52, said his drug use is ongoing, especially his consumption of ketamine, and that they are concerned it could cause a health crisis. Even if it doesn’t, it could damage his businesses.

Illegal drug use would likely be a violation of federal policies that could jeopardize SpaceX’s billions of dollars in government contracts. Musk is intrinsic to the value of his companies, potentially putting at risk around $1 trillion in assets held by investors, tens of thousands of jobs and big parts of the U.S. space program.

SpaceX is the only U.S. company now approved to transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has stepped up purchases of SpaceX rocket launches in recent years, and the company has also been looking to develop a large business selling satellite services to national-security agencies.

One former Tesla director, Linda Johnson Rice, grew so frustrated with Musk’s volatile behavior and her concerns about his drug consumption that she didn’t stand for re-election to the electric-car company’s board in 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

An attorney for Musk, Alex Spiro, said that Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.” Spiro, who said he represents Tesla, added in response to detailed questions that “there are other false facts” in this article but didn’t detail them.

The people around Musk long ago became accustomed to his volatile behavior. Some SpaceX executives who had long worked with him, however, noticed a change at a company event in late 2017.

Hundreds of SpaceX employees gathered around mission control at the rocket company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., in anticipation of Musk, who was nearly an hour late to arrive at the all-hands meeting about the company’s latest rocket.

When he finally took the stage, Musk was strangely incomprehensible at times. He slurred his words and rambled for around 15 minutes, according to executives in attendance, and referred repeatedly to SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket prototype, which was known as BFR, as “Big F—ing Rocket.”

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell ultimately stepped in and took over the meeting.

It couldn’t be learned if Musk was under the influence that day. But after the meeting, the SpaceX executives privately talked about their worries Musk was on drugs. One described the event as “nonsensical,” “unhinged” and “cringeworthy.”

Spiro called the description of the SpaceX incident “false as has been confirmed by countless people who were present.” He declined to elaborate on what specifically was false or describe the countless people.

Then in 2018, people familiar with Musk’s behavior said, another incident seemed to mark a turning point for him—and showed that his drug use could have consequences for his businesses. That year, Musk got into trouble with NASA for smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan show, raising red flags for some about the business impact of Musk’s conduct and causing employees at SpaceX to be randomly tested for drugs.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e1?reflink=integratedwebview_share

A controversial New York Times opinion piece that openly speculated this week whether Taylor Swift is a closeted queer person has drawn the ire of the pop superstar’s associates, CNN has learned.

“Because of her massive success, in this moment there is a Taylor-shaped hole in people’s ethics,” a person close to the situation, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told CNN. “This article wouldn’t have been allowed to be written about Shawn Mendes or any male artist whose sexuality has been questioned by fans.”

“There seems to be no boundary some journalists won’t cross when writing about Taylor, regardless of how invasive, untrue, and inappropriate it is – all under the protective veil of an ‘opinion piece,’” the person added.

In the 5,000-word piece, written in The Times’ opinion section, editor Anna Marks strung together a long list of LGBTQ references — some overt, some perceived — Swift has weaved into her songs and performances. Marks suggested that Swift had, perhaps, for years been trying to signal that she identifies with the queer community.

“In isolation, a single dropped hairpin is perhaps meaningless or accidental, but considered together, they’re the unfurling of a ballerina bun after a long performance,” Marks wrote. “Those dropped hairpins began to appear in Ms. Swift’s artistry long before queer identity was undeniably marketable to mainstream America. They suggest to queer people that she is one of us.”

Swift has in the past embraced the LGBTQ community, taking stands in support of her fans amid a record number of anti-gay bills introduced around the country, calling her concerts a “safe space” for LGBTQ people. But she has denied that she is a member of the LGBTQ community. In a 2019 interview with Vogue magazine, Swift said she has simply aimed to be a good ally to the LGBTQ community as their rights come under attack.

“Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” Swift told the magazine. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.”

Swift also wrote in the prologue to her re-recorded “1989” album, which was released last year, that she surrounded herself with female friends because society speculated incessantly about whether she was romantically involved with males she was publicly seen with.

“If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would,” she wrote.

It is highly unusual for a reputable news organization like The Times to publish an article speculating on a person’s sexuality, let alone a figure of immense cultural significance who has previously denied the insinuations. Such pieces are widely considered to be inappropriate, and The Times received some criticism from readers for its decision to publish its piece on Swift.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/06/business/taylor-swift-new-york-times/index.html

When a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s remote Noto peninsula on New Year’s Day, millions of people were alerted by a small company that has been punching above its weight for years now.

NERV is run by a small private firm called Gehirn – meaning brain in German – with just 13 full-time staff.

Still, its warnings of Japan’s frequent earthquakes are often faster than those issued by official bodies and the country’s public broadcaster, NHK.

NERV’s Japanese-language account on X (formerly Twitter) has 2.2 million followers while another 35,000 people use it in English. Its app, which was launched in September 2019, has been downloaded more than four million times from both the Apple Store and Google Play.

It was created in 2010 as an account by then 19-year-old Daiki Ishimori.

X is huge in Japan and is the go-to social media platform for disaster information in the country – especially since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

As well as offering real-time information on earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions NERV also provides updates on extreme weather events like typhoons, flooding and heavy snow.

The account collates and tweets out data from a number of agencies that track natural disasters – often releasing information faster than even they do.

Mr Ishimori said NERV is heavily influenced by hit anime TV show Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is set in a post-apocalyptic world after half of the human population has been wiped out.

The account’s name “special service agency NERV” is a nod to an organisation in the show that issues alerts about threats to humankind.

“I created NERV as a parody account because Twitter was getting popular at the time,” Mr Ishimori tells the BBC.

“It started as my programming hobby to post automated tweets about weather alerts using the Japan Meteorological Agency data.”

At the time, the account only had around 300 followers.

But then in 2011, Japan’s most powerful earthquake on record struck.

Best known for triggering a tsunami that caused a nuclear accident in Fukushima, the quake also caused great loss of life in his hometown Ishinomaki in Miyagi in the north-east of the country.

For four days, Mr Ishimori was unable to contact his family. “To be honest, I thought they must be dead,” he recalls. He later found out that while his immediate family was safe, one of his aunts had died.

“I realised we needed to have other ways – not just TV and radio – to communicate disaster information,” he says, as TV became useless during power cuts.

He started posting about earthquakes, and as Japan experienced more natural disasters, the account added hundreds of thousands of new followers.

However, recent changes to X had an impact on NERV during the New Year’s Day earthquake.

Last year, X started charging users to access its application programming interface (API), which links X to external systems and enables automated posts on the platform.

The platform’s API was previously free to use, but now only allows up to 1,500 free automated posts a month.

Gehirn subscribes to a basic plan, which allows 100 posts a day for $100 (£79) a month.

When it sent out earthquake and tsunami alerts on Monday, NERV said it appeared to have hit this cap and encouraged its followers to download its app.

Several hours later, it said that X had registered its accounts – both in Japanese and English – as “public utility”, which resolved the issue.

But NERV had already started shifting away from the platform in 2019 when its account was locked for several hours during an earthquake.

“If we are on other people’s platforms, their rules can suddenly change so we want to focus on our own platform,” Mr Ishimori says.

He says his mission has always been to “make Japan safer” – not make money, adding he aims to make the NERV app as accessible as possible, including for those with disabilities.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67869653

OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) were sued on Friday in Manhattan federal court by a pair of nonfiction authors who say the companies misused their work to train the artificial-intelligence models behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT and other AI-based services.

Writers Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage told the court in a proposed class action that the companies infringed their copyrights by including several of their books as part of the data used to train OpenAI’s GPT large language model.

Representatives for Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint.

The lawsuit follows several others filed by fiction and nonfiction writers ranging from comedian Sarah Silverman to “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin against tech companies over the alleged use of their work to train AI programs.

The New York Times also sued OpenAI and Microsoft last week over the use of its journalists’ work to train AI applications.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/microsoft-openai-hit-with-new-lawsuit-by-authors-over-ai-training-2024-01-05

Apple lost $100 billion in market value in one day – more than combined worth of Ford and GM – and ‘lackluster’ sales of one gadget are to blame

• Sales of iPhone 15 are ‘lackluster’ according to Barclays analyst – with iPhone 16 set to be low too due to lack of new features
• Barclays cut target price for shares as a result – causing market value to dip
• Issues in China are affecting iPhone sales, and could cause them to fall more

Apple’s share price fell more than four per cent in the past day – wiping more than $100 billion of its market value.

The one-day decline is more than the combined value of Ford and General Motors.

Sluggish sales of the $1,599 iPhone 15 – and fears even the next model due in September will disappoint too – led to Barclays announcing Tuesday it was downgrading the stock.

That caused an immediate 4 percent slide in the share price, which is now hovering around $184 – a seven-week low – after being above $192.

Apple’s valuation fell by $107billion, according to data from Refinitv.

AirBnB, Fed Ex, Citigroup and Starbucks are all worth less than that amount. Together Ford and GM, once two of the biggest companies in the world, are not even worth that amount.

Barclays thinks Apple shares will fall to $160, and advised its clients to sell stock if they have it.

Barclays analyst Tim Long said sales of Apple’s iPhone 15 smartphones have been ‘lackluster’ and the upcoming iPhone 16 ‘should be the same.’

‘We see no features or upgrades that are likely to make the iPhone 16 more compelling,’ the note adds.

Sales of Mac computers and iPads were also weak and revenues from services – for example, fees for iCloud, Apple TV+ and Music – are not expected to grow more than ten per cent.

Source : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-12923323/apple-billion-dollar-market-value-loss.html

Interim Budget 2024: Jefferies said the recent state elections showed that income transfer policies and other welfare schemes have been key to campaigns; and even BJP has been matching some of these promises.

Foreign brokerage Jefferies said the approaching Lok Sabha elections imply welfare spending imperative is high as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaigns on ‘Modi’s guarantees’ and the same may be visible during the February 1 interim Budget. The recent state elections showed that income transfer policies and other welfare schemes have been key to campaigns, Jefferies said adding that even BJP has been matching some of the promises.

Jefferies said the estimated cost of such schemes has been around 150-200 basis points of GDP at the state levels. “Prior to the 2019 elections also the Budget had carried large welfare scheme in the form of income transfers to farmers,” Jefferies noted.

While a large new scheme is possible ahead of 2024 polls, some popular schemes of BJP may also get expansion or extra resources to boost implementation rates such as ‘Housing for All’, and health insurance, Jefferies said.

Jefferies said the government’s annual cash transfer scheme of Rs 6,000 per farmer may see an increase. “Overall, we expect the social spending of government (excluding subsidies) to rise by 7-8 per cent in FY25E against a 3 per cent increase in FY24E,” the broking firm said.

Jefferies said the central government’s capex has surged by three times over the past five years, taking the government capex to GDP ratio to all-time-high 3.3 per cent of GDP in FY24. The incremental growth from here could turn limited, at least in FY25, as welfare spending pressures and budget consolidation takes a toll.

“We expect only about 7-8 per cent growth in government capex budget for FY25E,” Jefferies said.

Jefferies said the pressure to raise welfare spending amidst a consolidating fiscal would imply a search for revenues. While it does not expect an immediate tax hike, considering elections, some post election measures such as higher capital gains tax are possible during the year.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/market-commentary/story/interim-budget-2024-lok-sabha-elections-in-run-up-to-polls-what-jefferies-says-on-feb-1-modis-guarantees-411495-2024-01-02

Chinese company BYD has moved a step closer to toppling Elon Musk’s Tesla as the world’s biggest-selling manufacturer of electric vehicles.

The firm said on Monday it had sold a record 526,000 battery-only vehicles in the last three months of 2023.

That was helped by a more than 70% surge in sales in December.

US-based Tesla is scheduled to release its latest quarterly vehicle production and delivery figures before Wall Street opens on Tuesday.

For the year as a whole, Shenzen-based BYD said it had sold more than 3 million so-called-new energy vehicles (NEVs), which includes battery-only vehicles and hybrids.

Almost 1.6 million of its total sales were battery-only vehicles, the firm said.

Industry analysts have forecast that Tesla sold around 483,000 electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023 and 1.82 million for the year as a whole.

Last January, Mr Musk said that Tesla had the potential to achieve 2 million deliveries in 2023 but had since warned that higher borrowing costs were putting pressure on demand for his company’s cars.

BYD’s chief executive Wang Chuanfu co-founded BYD with his cousin in Shenzhen in 1995.

The company made a name for itself as a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries – used in smartphones, laptops and other electronics – that competed with pricier Japanese imports.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67860232

The primary market will take a breather after witnessing a bustling month of December with no new issues to open in the coming week. Around seven new SME companies will make their stock debut on the exchanges in the coming week

Two SME issues, Kay Cee Energy & Infra Ltd and Kaushalya Logistics Ltd, which opened last week, will remain open for bidding.

Last week, half a dozen companies got listed in the Indian equity market. Muthoot Microfin, Suraj Real Estate Developers, Motisons Jewellers, Credo Brands, Happy Forgings, RBZ Jewellers, Azad Engineering together, these companies have raised ₹3,910 crore and have garnered subscriptions between 12 and 173 times.

2023 has been the year of initial public offerings (IPOs), with 173 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and 52 mainboard listings to date, along with some outstanding debuts and subscriptions from both.

“I believe that 2024 will continue to see a great number of IPOs—possibly even better than 2023—given the expectation of GDP growth, the India manufacturing story, and the feeling that the current ruling dispensation will return to power based on the recent state elections’ performance,” said Venkatraghavan S., Managing Director, Investment Banking, at Equirus.

IPOs open next week

1. Kay Cee Energy & Infra Ltd
   Kay Cee Energy & Infra IPO bidding opened for subscription on December 28, 2023 and will close on January 2, 2024. It is a book-built issue of ₹15.93 crores and is entirely a fresh issue of 29.5 lakh shares.The company has set the price band at ₹51 to ₹54 per share, with a face value of ₹10 per share. The allotment for the SME IPO is expected to be finalized on Wednesday, January 3, 2024 and the tentative listing date fixed as Friday, January 5, 2024.
2. Kaushalya Logistics Ltd
   Kaushalya Logistics IPO bidding opened for subscription on December 29, 2023 and will close on January 3, 2024. It is a book-built issue of ₹36.60 crores and a combination of fresh issue of 33.8 lakh shares aggregating to ₹25.35 crores and offer for sale of 15 lakh shares aggregating to ₹11.25 crores.

   The company has set the price band at ₹71 to ₹75 per share, with a face value of ₹10 per share. The allotment for the issue is expected to be finalized on Thursday, January 4, 2024 with tentative listing date fixed as Monday, January 8, 2024.

Source : https://www.livemint.com/market/ipo/ipos-next-week-2-issues-to-remain-open-7-new-sme-companies-to-make-stock-market-debut-11704000171251.html

Despite widespread pessimism witnessed among the developed nations and the worsening geopolitical situation, India recorded a gross domestic product (GDP) expansion of 6.1 per cent in the March quarter. The growth moved up to 7.8 per cent in the June quarter and was 7.6 per cent in the September quarter.

India decisively withstood global headwinds in 2023 and is likely to remain as the world’s fastest-growing major economy on the back of growing demand, moderate inflation, stable interest rate regime and robust foreign exchange reserves.

Despite widespread pessimism witnessed among the developed nations and the worsening geopolitical situation, India recorded a gross domestic product (GDP) expansion of 6.1 per cent in the March quarter. The growth moved up to 7.8 per cent in the June quarter and was 7.6 per cent in the September quarter.

For the first six months of this fiscal, the growth was 7.7 per cent.

The growth momentum is expected to sustain in the December quarter, making India the fastest-growing major economy in the world much ahead of China.

According to the latest growth projections of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which appear conservative, India will record a growth of 6.3 per cent in 2023, ahead of China and Brazil at 5.2 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

For 2024, the OECD expects India to grow at 6.1 per cent and China at 4.7 per cent.

On the other hand, major economies, including the US, UK and Japan, are likely to witness either deceleration or very nominal increase in economic growth rates in the coming year.

India’s performance on the economic front in 2023 appears even better when viewed from a global perspective.

As per the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook, global growth is estimated to decelerate from 3.5 per cent in 2022 to 3 per cent in 2023 and further to 2.9 per cent in 2024.

Ashima Goyal, Member of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said India’s growth has “shown great resilience despite many external shocks. This is due to increasing economic diversity and the role of policy in smoothing shocks”.

Source : https://www.deccanherald.com/business/economy/india-to-remain-fastest-growing-major-economy-in-2024-2830556

The police have identified inadequate parking facilities at the Phoenix Mall of Asia as a significant contributor to the city’s traffic woes

Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda has on Saturday instructed the administration of the recently inaugurated Phoenix Mall of Asia to cease operations for 15 days, from December 31 to January 15. This directive comes in response to the severe traffic congestions caused by the mall in the northern part of the Karnataka capital.

The police have identified inadequate parking facilities at the mall as a significant contributor to the city’s traffic woes. Authorities are concerned about rising public inconvenience due to frequent gridlocks arising from the heavy influx of vehicles to the Mall.

As the New Year and subsequent long weekends approach, the officials anticipate heightened traffic snarls in the already congested Hebbal district. Dayananda revealed his personal visit to the mall confirmed its role as a focal point for the city’s traffic problems.

Bengaluru’s citizens said they could see this coming because the mall had inadequate parking and that has led to constant traffic jams in that area.

“A reflection of urban planning and approval process in the city,” said one netizen on X platform (formerly Twitter).

The police have invoked sections 144(1) and 144(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure to restrict public access to Phoenix Mall of Asia, which was recently opened on International Airport Road, Bellari Road, Byatarayanapura, Yelahanka, from 10 am on December 31 to 11:59 pm on January 15, 2024.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/in-focus/story/bengaluru-police-orders-mall-to-close-for-next-15-days-to-ease-traffic-woes-netizens-say-a-blot-on-citys-image-411379-2023-12-31

Oil prices have sputtered since the U.S. began selling its stockpiles

Head of state. Commander in chief. Oil-trading whale?

President Biden’s unprecedented release of oil from the U.S. petroleum reserves in 2022 turned the White House into an unusually active player in the volatile crude market. The flood of emergency supplies helped arrest surging oil prices after Russia invaded Ukraine, and pulled billions of dollars into the Energy Department’s coffers in the process.

Oil prices have sputtered since and allowed officials who sold high to start replenishing U.S. stockpiles on the cheap. The question that will echo from Washington to Wall Street in 2024 is how the Biden administration might finish off a trade many investors would envy.

The Energy Department says it has already snapped up about 13.8 million barrels of crude, with accelerating deals in recent weeks signaling the agency could move more aggressively in 2024.

At an average price of $75.63 a barrel, the purchases so far total a nearly $270 million theoretical discount from 2022’s average sale price of $95 a barrel.

The Energy Department will have about $3.45 billion left to buy more oil after those deliveries are complete, a spokeswoman said. That is enough cash for tens of millions more barrels of crude.

The Biden administration’s opportunity to build on its gains could slip away if prices rise. Benchmark U.S. crude changed hands Friday at $71.65 a barrel, well below the administration’s asking price of $79 or lower, even as fallout from the Israel-Hamas war threatens tankers in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.

Any major ramp-up in deals would come with challenges. It could strain the country’s ability to release emergency supplies, because storage sites can’t accept crude at the same time. The facilities, some of which are currently undergoing maintenance, are also limited in how much they can receive each month.

But some traders and analysts say locking in future purchases at today’s prices could help turn U.S. stockpiles into a force for market stability and expand America’s clout as an energy superpower.

“Even if it’s at a small size, being able to exert that muscle could be very valuable,” said Skanda Amarnath, executive director of the macroeconomic policy think tank Employ America.

The U.S. and other countries began amassing stockpiles in the 1970s, aiming to hold 90 days’ worth of net imports, after the Arab oil embargo sent prices skyrocketing in an inflationary shock to the American economy.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve peaked in size in 2010 near 727 million barrels, according to the Energy Information Administration. Since then, booming shale output helped the U.S. become the world’s largest oil producer, and officials from both parties pushed to sell off some of the stockpiles to fund other projects.

Biden’s release after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the largest ever. Emergency sales of roughly 180 million barrels helped shrink the reserves to as little as 347 million barrels, a 40-year low.

Source : https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/president-joe-biden-oil-trader-extraordinaire-e97947fb?st=s9qtjkct5ps047l

Brainbees Solutions Ltd, the parent company of baby products e-commerce platform FirstCry, is set to launch its Initial Public Offering (IPO). The company submitted an application for IPO with the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Thursday, December 28, according to a Moneycontrol report.

The leading Pune-based company aims to raise Rs 1,816 crore through the IPO, which will comprise primary issue of equity shares and an offer for sale (OFS).

Several existing shareholders including former Tata Group Chairman like Ratan Tata is expected to divest their shareholding in the company through the upcoming IPO. According to the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) filed with SEBI on Thursday, Ratan Tata is looking to sell all 77,900 shares, PTI reported.

These shares amount to Tata’s 0.02 percent stake in Brainbees Solutions Ltd. Tata became an investor in the company in 2016 by infusing Rs 66 lakh initially. He was allotted the shares under preferential allotment.

As per the DRHP, the Pune-based company’s proposed IPO comprises an OFS of up to 5.44 crore equity shares. Apart from the fresh issue of shares, existing investors like Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), private equity firm TPG, NewQuest Asia and SoftBank, will together sell a total of 5.44 crore shares in Brainbees via an Offer for Sale (OFS), the Moneycontrol report added.

However, there is no information as of now regarding the total size and the issue price of the IPO.

Source: https://www.news18.com/business/firstcry-ipo-ratan-tata-mahindra-and-mahindra-to-sell-their-shares-8721260.html

The 66-year-old billionaire said as Reliance reinvents itself to become a new age technology company it needs ‘to be at [the] forefront of using data, with AI as an enabler for achieving a quantum jump in productivity and efficiency’

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday that he wants the conglomerate to pioneer artificial intelligence solutions for India’s urgent priorities including healthcare, education, agriculture and employment.

The 66-year-old billionaire said as Reliance reinvents itself to become a new age technology company it needs “to be at [the] forefront of using data, with AI as an enabler for achieving a quantum jump in productivity and efficiency”.

Ambani said Reliance Industries will grow to be among the top 10 business conglomerates of the world and said RIL will be a global leader in digital platforms, data and AI adoption.

“As India races ahead to become world’s third largest economy, an unprecendented opportunity awaits Reliance. Reliance can and Reliance will grow to be among the top 10 business conglomerates of the world,” he said at the Reliance Family Day.

Mukesh Ambani has led the transformation of Reliance from a traditional energy and material business company into a technology company over the last decade with the launch of its telecom and digital services.

Reliance, which was started by Mukesh’s father Dhirubhai Ambani in 1957, now operates in telecoms, digital services, retail, oil and gas and new energy with a market value of more than $200 billion.

To supports its AI ambitions, in September Reliance signed a deal with US chip firm Nvidia to develop cloud infrastructure and language models, as well as generative applications.

In his year-end address to employees on Thursday, Mukesh Ambani urged them to bring AI-led transformation across the company’s key growth engines including digital services, retail, oil and chemical business as well as health and life science by 2024.

“We need to be at the forefront of using data, with AI as an enabler for achieving a quantum jump in productivity and efficiency. All our growth engines of Reliance — Digital Services, Green and Bio-Energy, Retail and Consumer Brands, O2C and Materials business and Health and Life Sciences — will have to complete this transformation by the time we meet next year,” said Ambani to his employees.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/will-be-among-top-10-business-conglomerates-of-world-mukesh-ambani-wants-ril-to-emerge-as-pioneer-ai-developer-for-india-411178-2023-12-28

The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) sent tax demand notices to Zomato and Swiggy for non-payment of GST on delivery charges

Mumbai: Food delivery aggregators Zomato and Swiggy are in hot soup over unpaid taxes on delivery charges collected from online customers.

Zomato has received a Good and Services Tax (GST) notice over tax liability of ₹401.7 crore.

The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) sent tax demand notices to Zomato and Swiggy for non-payment of GST on delivery charges.

According to GST officials, the food delivery charges fall under the services category and the aggregators are liable to pay 18% GST.

The tax authority has demanded Zomato to pay penalties and interest from October 2019 to March 2022 over its inability to pay tax on delivery charges which it collected from customers on behalf of the delivery partners.

Zomato contests GST demand

Zomato has contested the GST demand stating it was not liable to pay any tax.

The food delivery giant responding to the GST notice said, “The delivery charge is collected by the company on behalf of the delivery partners. Further, in view of the contractual terms and conditions mutually agreed upon, the delivery partners have provided the delivery services to the customers and not the company.”

Source: https://www.freepressjournal.in/topnews/tax-evasion-zomato-swiggy-get-dggi-notice-over-non-payment-of-gst-on-delivery-charges

The milestone came as shares of L’Oréal SA, the beauty products empire founded by her grandfather, rose to a record high, with the stock set for its best year since 1998.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/companies/loreal-heir-francoise-bettencourt-meyers-becomes-first-woman-with-100-billion-fortune-2828675

In the Indian bond market, total value of government debt or government bonds stands at Rs 161.1 lakh crore. While corporate bonds valued at Rs 44.2 lakh crore as of September 2023

The bond or fixed-income market size is rapidly expanding in India. Data available from SEBI and CCIL show that in the last five years, the total bond market value has surged over 77 per cent to Rs 192.4 lakh crore in the financial year (FY) 2023 from Rs 108.8 lakh crore in FY18. In FY24, the total value of outstanding bonds in the Indian market stands at Rs 205.3 lakh crore as of September 30, 2023.

In the Indian bond market, the total value of government debt or government bonds stands at Rs 161.1 lakh crore, holding a 78 per cent market share, while corporate bonds have a 22 per cent share at Rs 44.2 lakh crore as of September 2023. Bonds or fixed-income securities offer a constant money flow at regular intervals and are considered less risky than equity. Corporate bonds offer higher interest rates, while government bonds are considered highly secure for investment.

Bond market veteran Vishal Goenka, Co-founder of IndiaBonds.com, said that in the last five years from FY 2017-2018 to FY 2022-23, the overall bond market grew by 77 per cent in absolute terms. The government bond market led, showing a growth of 85 per cent, while the corporate bond market grew by 53 per cent. The slower growth in the corporate bond market can be attributed to the credit crisis that the country underwent from 2018-2021, which saw numerous corporate defaults, especially in the NBFC sector, as well as the metals/mining manufacturing sector.

Bond market outlook for 2024

Goenka further said, “It is anticipated that the RBI may start cutting rates from next year. This is because inflation is showing a declining trend globally, and also the US Fed, in its latest policy last week, indicated that they may see 2-3 rate cuts while remaining data-dependent.”

He added that the interest rates market in India has, for some time, delinked from the US market. RBI last hiked rates in Feb 2023 and has been holding steady since then. The last reading of CPI showed a higher print as well, and domestic growth came in at a higher-than-expected 7.6 per cent for the previous quarter. Hence, “higher for longer” may continue to be the mantra in India.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/top-story/story/indian-bond-market-value-surged-to-over-rs-200-lakh-crore-heres-what-to-expect-from-the-bond-market-in-2024-410964-2023-12-27

Japan’s nuclear power regulator on Wednesday lifted an operational ban it imposed on Tokyo Electric Power’s (9501.T) massive Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant two years ago, clearing the path for it to resume a process towards a restart.

Tepco has been eager to bring the world’s largest atomic power plant back online to slash operating costs, but a resumption still needs local consent in Niigata prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast.

With capacity of 8,212 megawatts (MW), the plant has been offline since around 2011, when the Fukushima disaster prompted the eventual shutdown of all nuclear power plants in Japan at the time.

In 2021, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) barred Tepco from operating Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, its only operable atomic power station, due to safety breaches including the failure to protect nuclear materials and missteps that led to an unauthorised staff member accessing sensitive areas of the plant.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/worlds-biggest-nuclear-plant-japan-resume-path-towards-restart-2023-12-27/

Cyriac picked additional 24.99 lakh equity shares or 0.52 percent of paid-up equity in Indiabulls Housing Finance at an average price of Rs 213.57 per share.

Shares of Indiabulls Housing Finance gained nearly 2 percent at open on the NSE, a day after former equity head of Blackstone India, Mathew Cyriac, picked up an additional stake in the company. At 9:20am, the stock was trading at Rs 217.15. Over the last six moths, the shares has gained over 80 percent.

As per exchange data, Mathew Cyriac, the former private equity co-head of Blackstone India, picked up additional 24.99 lakh equity shares or 0.52 percent of paid-up equity in Indiabulls Housing Finance at an average price of Rs 213.57 per share. Cyriac previously held 1 percent stake in the company, as of September 2023 data.

In Q2FY24, the company reported a 3 percent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 298 crore in the second quarter ended September 2023 against Rs 289 crore in the last fiscal. Total income during the quarter under review rose to Rs 2,242 crore from Rs 2,231 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago, Indiabulls Housing Finance said in a regulatory filing. Additionally interest income fell to Rs 1,731 crore from Rs 2,126 crore in the previous fiscal.

Source: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/stocks/indiabulls-housing-finance-gains-as-former-blackstone-equity-head-raises-stake-11959891.html

Apple has been accused of stealing pulse oximetry technology from a medical monitoring tech company and assimilating it into its watches.

Apple has said it would suffer “irreparable harm” after the White House allowed a ban on imports on some of its watches following a dispute over the devices’ blood oxygen technology.

The tech giant is filing an emergency motion asking a court to allow it to sell two of its most popular watches – the Series 9 and Ultra 2 models – until the patent dispute against medical monitoring technology company, Masimo, is resolved.

It requested to pause the ban at least until US Customs decides whether the redesigned versions of its watches infringe Masimo’s patents.

The customs office is to make its decision on 12 January.

Masimo has accused Apple of stealing its pulse oximetry technology – used to monitor blood oxygen levels – and assimilating it into its watches.

It also claims the Californian company has convinced some of its employees to join them.

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) ordered a ban on imports and sales of models that use technology for reading blood-oxygen levels.

Apple already stopped selling the watches before the Christmas period, a move that will likely cost the company $300-400m in holiday sales, according to wealth management analyst Dan Ives.

But the multinational is predicted to generate nearly $120bn (£104bn) in sales this quarter – including the holiday period, despite the setback.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/apple-watch-ban-tech-company-fears-it-will-suffer-irreparable-harm-after-sales-suspension-upheld-by-white-house-13038041

As the market for anti-obesity drugs in India grows rapidly, pharma majors like Dr. Reddy’s, Zydus, and Sun Pharma are competing to quickly enter the market with weight-loss drugs

indian pharmaceutical companies are hungry for the next frontier: drugs to fight obesity, a condition that has become the biggest worry for the urban well-off as they gorge on calorie-dense food (read: junk and fast food) and lead unhealthy lifestyles.

Anti-obesity drugs are big business in the West, where obesity has reached epic proportions (according to the Global Obesity Observatory, 36.47 per cent of the US adult population is obese). As well-travelled Indians bring back the pills, Indian companies have scoped the business and want a share of the action.

Indian pharma companies already have a spectrum of drugs to tackle diabetes and a clutch of other medical conditions that are linked to obesity. But they are looking at specific pills to fight obesity as people want such pills from their doctor. “There has been a perceptible trend… among upper-income group obese patients who have connections in other countries where these drugs are accessible,” says Dr Anoop Misra, Chairman, Fortis C-DOC Hospital. “Many of these individuals have received recommendations for these drugs from relatives residing in Western countries, where such medications are widely used,” says Misra who is also the Director at National Diabetes, Obesity & Cholesterol Foundation.

Indians are not giving up on the usual tools such as diet and exercise to control weight. But these tools don’t work so well for the obese. Note: All obese people are overweight, but not all overweight people are obese. If you are the average Indian at 5 feet 6 inches tall (So says online data platform Statista, quoting a 2019 survey), and weigh 70 kg, you have just entered the overweight class (body mass index or BMI of 25.3). If you are 115 kg and above at that height, you are obese.

The number of obese people is rising in India. The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) data from 2019-2021 reveals 33.2 per cent of urban women and 29.8 per cent of urban men (in the age group of 15-49 years) are overweight or obese. Obesity affects over 135 million individuals, making it a significant health concern. Childhood obesity is a particularly alarming issue in urban India, where it holds the record for the highest number of obese children globally (over 15 million). The prevalence of overweight and obese among children aged 5-19 has surged from 4 per cent in 1975 to an alarming 18 per cent in 2016, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). These children will grow up to add to the population of adult obese.

Doctors say several factors contribute to the rise in obesity in urban India, ranging from rapidly changing lifestyles and increased consumption of processed foods and high-sugar beverages to little physical activity. Genetic predisposition is another layer.

“There has certainly been a rise in the demand for weight-loss drugs. But weight-loss medications should be taken only under medical supervision, and the patient needs to comply with all other instructions given by the physician along with regular follow-ups,” says Dr Pradeep Chowbey, Chairman, Max Institute of Laparoscopic, Endoscopic, Bariatric Surgery & Allied Surgical Specialities. “Patients, unfortunately, see this as an easy fix and want to try this option even if they do not fit the criteria for these medications. Even people who are slightly overweight want to try these medications as an easy fix to stay in shape,” he says.

How the anti-obesity pills stack up

The intersection of medical advancements and consumer aspirations has made the battle against obesity the collective aim of patients, doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

Weight loss drugs have different mechanisms (see box ‘Fighting the Flab’). Some like the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists, work by making your stomach feel full by mimicking the hormone GLP-1. Some, like phentermine, suppress appetite and increase the metabolic rate, making you lose weight. Some, like orlistat, decrease fat absorption in the gut, reducing calorie intake and aiding in weight loss.

Globally recognised weight loss drugs include Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy/Ozempic (semaglutide) and Saxenda (liraglutide), which influence the GLP-1 hormone, promoting fullness and reducing food intake. Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro (tirzepatide) combines GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) hormones produced in the gut for weight loss.

Denmark’s Novo Nordisk leads in weight management with Ozempic and Wegovy. Eli Lilly of the US offers Mounjaro. Vivus Pharmaceuticals, also of the US, developed Qsymia, a US-based combination pill that suppresses appetite and boosts metabolism. Switzerland’s Roche Pharmaceuticals has orlistat (Xenical), which reduces fat absorption. Orexigen Therapeutics, another US company, has Contrave, a combination pill targeting brain pathways to reduce cravings. But all these cost a bomb.

In India, weight loss options are limited, with orlistat, metformin, and liraglutide (Victoza). Metformin, a diabetes drug, increases insulin sensitivity and lowers blood sugar levels, helping in weight management. Liraglutide, originally a diabetes medication, is prescribed in lower doses for its GLP-1 mimicking effects, aiding in weight loss. Ozempic, introduced in India by Novo Nordisk under the brand name Rybelsus in January 2022 for blood glucose control in adults with Type 2 diabetes, is also prescribed by some doctors for weight loss as it works on the hormones responsible for making you feel hungry.

Doctors say Wegovy and Mounjaro are also undergoing trials for weight loss in India. “Indian pharma companies can only duplicate them if basic material is available and certainly cannot develop them as yet,” says Misra of Fortis.

Several Indian pharma companies are developing their weight-loss drugs, including Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Zydus Cadila and Sun Pharma. Sun Pharma discovered and is developing GL0034 (utreglutide), a long-acting GLP-1 receptor agonist (RA) used for non-obese and obese adults without diabetes.

In June this year, Sun Pharma presented data from the first-in-human Phase 1 studies for this molecule. The Phase 1 studies suggest that GL0034 is a candidate to provide therapeutic benefits for obese adults. Sun Pharma tells BT that further clinical studies are planned. “The rising incidence of obesity and diabetes places a significant burden on global healthcare systems, and GLP-1 agonists have emerged as a useful option for treating these conditions with a single agent,” says Dilip Shanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharma.

In October 2023, the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on endocrinology and metabolism gave Dr. Reddy’s permission to conduct a bioequivalence study to assess the safety and effectiveness of the drug.

Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/deep-dive/story/why-pharma-majors-are-rushing-to-put-anti-obesity-drugs-on-indian-shelves-410620-2023-12-23

In a statement, the finance ministry said that several other countries are expected to perform worse than India on the debt front

India on Friday said the International Monetary Fund’s projection of the general government debt exceeding 100 per cent of the country’s GDP by 2027-28 is “misconstrued”.

In a statement, the finance ministry said that several other countries are expected to perform worse than India on the debt front.

For instance, the corresponding figures of ‘worst-case’ scenarios for the USA, UK and China are about 160, 140, and 200 per cent, respectively, which is far worse compared to 100 per cent for India, the statement said.

“It is also noteworthy that the same report indicates that under favourable circumstances, the general government debt to GDP ratio may decline to below 70 per cent in the same period.

“Therefore, any interpretation that the report implies that general government debt would exceed 100 per cent of GDP in the medium term is misconstrued,” the ministry said in its rebuttal to the IMF report following the annual Article IV consultation with Indian authorities.

Further, the ministry said the general government debt (including both state and centre) has steeply declined from about 88 per cent in FY 2020-21 to about 81 per cent in 2022-23, and the Centre is on track to achieve its stated fiscal consolidation target to reduce fiscal deficit below 4.5 per cent of GDP by FY 2025-26.

“The states have also individually enacted their fiscal responsibility legislation, which is monitored by their respective state legislatures.

“Therefore, it is expected that the general government debt will decline substantially in the medium to long term,” it said.

As per Article IV consultation report by the IMF earlier this week, while the budget deficit has eased, public debt remains elevated and fiscal buffers need to be rebuilt.

IMF reviews a country’s current and medium-term economic policies and outlook.

Looking forward, India’s elevated public debt calls for additional revenue and expenditure measures, such as further GST and subsidy reforms, while continuing to prioritise public investment and targeted support for the vulnerable, the report said.

Source: https://www.telegraphindia.com/business/imfs-projection-of-government-debt-exceeding-100-per-cent-of-gdp-misconstrued-finance-ministry/cid/1988756

Increasing for the fifth week in a row, India’s foreign exchange (forex) reserves jumped $9.11 billion during the week ended December 15 to hit an over 20-month high of $615.97 billion.

In the previous reporting week, the overall reserves had risen $2.816 billion to $606.859 billion.

In October 2021, the country’s forex kitty reached an all-time high of $645 billion. The reserves took a hit as the central bank deployed the kitty to defend the rupee amid pressures caused majorly by global developments since last year.

For the week ended December 15, the foreign currency assets, a major component of the reserves, increased $8.349 billion to $545.048 billion, as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data released on Friday.

Expressed in dollar terms, the foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units like the euro, pound, and yen held in the foreign exchange reserves.

Gold reserves were up $446 million to $47.577 billion during the week, the RBI said. The special drawing rights (SDRs) were up $135 million to $18.323 billion, the apex bank said.

Source: https://www.news18.com/business/forex-update-indias-foreign-exchange-reserves-jump-9-1-billion-to-hit-20-month-high-of-616-billion-8714849.html