Latest Weekly India Business News 17th to 21st September 2018
Read Weekly India Business News 17th to 21st September 2018:
Corporates:
– Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services has reportedly hired SBI to find an investor for the majority stake in IL&FS Financial Services worth approx. ₹ 4,500 crore to pay down debts to avoid bankruptcy.
– Airtel is planning to build content on healthcare and education. It is also working on to sharpen its focus on regional music and videos to fight it out with Reliance Jio.
– Amid reports of deteriorating financial health, a consortium of overseas lenders to Jet Airways may ask the airline to expedite repayment of their loans worth $150 million. The lenders have already sent a letter to Jet Airways raising some queries.
– Income tax officials searched the four offices of Jet Airways for a suspected case of tax evasion. The airlines, reeling under various financial problems, is also stopping free meals on its Economy class for bookings done from 25th September.
– Google Pay now reportedly has 25 million active monthly users. Google has claimed that around 1.2 million businesses in India have adopted Google Pay as their preferred mode of payment.
– Reliance Jio added 11.78 Million mobile subscribers in July taking its total subscriber number to 227 Million, which is higher than the subscribers of Vodafone and Idea – 223 and 220 million respectively.
– BNP Paribas Cardif is wanting to sell its 22% stake in SBI Life Insurance and has already appointed three investment banks to look for buyers.
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– Samara Capital and Amazon.com Inc. have agreed to buy More, the food and grocery retail chain of Aditya Birla group. Though the deal amount has not been disclosed, but its expected to be around ₹4,200 crore.
– Flipkart has launched a new cashless credit program for consumers to give them access to an instant credit line of up to Rs 60,000 for shopping on Flipkart. Flipkart may also reportedly apply for a new NBFC licence.
– RBI has not accepted the plea of Yes Bank to extend the tenure of its MD & CEO Rana Kapoor and has asked the bank to draw a succession plan in the upcoming Board meeting.
– RIL is planning to set up Reliance Jio Hubs in smaller towns, which will be one-stop shops for all consumer items sold by Reliance Industries and its units. After Jio GigaFiber broadband services, these hubs will be the biggest focus area for RIL.
– The Government is considering a share buyback proposal for Coal India whereby it is planning to raise around Rs 10 billion as part of its disinvestment target from various public sector enterprises.
– Oil marketing companies have threatened to stop selling jet fuel to Air India unless it clears its fuel bill on a daily basis. Air India, which buys fuel of around Rs 20 crore daily, has mounted dues over Rs.5000 Crore to be paid to oil companies.
– Coca-Cola, Unilever and Nestle are reported to be among bidders for GlaxoSmithKline’s Indian Horlicks nutrition business. The deal size is expected to be over $4 billion.
– Flipkart Internet has received over ₹3,462-crore fund infusion from its Singapore entity – Flipkart Marketplace, just before the start of festive sale season.
– ICICI Bank has clarified that it has not filed any application with Sebi for settlement in the Chanda Kochhar issue as being reported.
– Nasscom has unveiled second phase of the initiative called ‘Accelerate 10X’ which will focus on mentoring deep technology ventures in areas like AI, ML and blockchain. 100 start-ups will be mentored every year for a period of six months.– Motilal Oswal Real Estate has raised ₹575 crore for its latest fund – India Realty Excellence Fund IV. The money will be used to develop affordable residential real estate in India’s top six cities.
– PayU India has received RBI approval to operate its own NBFC. This will help PayU India in launching new product variants at a faster pace.
– RBI has rejected Bank of Maharashtra’s request to set off its ₹2,543 crore losses against share premium amount.
– Cholamandalam Investment has raised ₹1,057 crore from Asian Development Bank by issuing bonds. Part of the money will be used to improve growth prospects and employment opportunities.
– HDFC Bank has started using WhatsApp and email for sending summons to customers in cheque bounce cases and has also requested approval for the same from various courts in India. As per data, over 60 lakh cheque bounce cases are pending with various banks.
– PhonePe is rethinking its plan for a million Point of Sale machines due to manufacturing hurdles as also reluctance from both sellers and customers.
– AION Capital has emerged as the front-runner to acquire InterGlobe Technologies for around Rs.1800 Crore. InterGlobe Tech offers services for various travel related solutions.
– BigBasket and Grofers have revived talks for a merger. Their investors Alibaba Group and SoftBank are willing to invest in the merged entity to take on Flipkart and Amazon in the groceries segment.
– SBI is now looking to sell defaulting companies to asset reconstruction companies instead of initiating bankruptcy proceedings against them. The companies include Essar Steel, Jai Balaji, Impex Ferro Tech, Rohit Ferro Tech, and Ballarpur Industries.
– TCS has won a contract worth Rs.500 Crore from Thomson Reuters for providing infrastructure management and application development services.
– Reliance Infrastructure is entering into composites manufacturing for supply to aircraft makers. The firm shall make an initial investment of Rs 85 crore and targets exports of Rs 315 crore over the next five years.
– A consortium of Micromax and Reliance Jio has bagged a Rs 1,500 crore order from the Chhattisgarh government to distribute 50 lakh smartphones to women and students in the state.
– Amazon has slashed seller fees in five categories and also reduced storage charges to encourage vendors to store more products.
Policies & Practices:
– Google has said that due to a clause in Google Pay’s privacy policy, it may share the payments data of customers with third-party service providers. Google has however denied sharing user data for monetization purposes.
– Despite a few central government ministers batting, petroleum products are not likely to be brought under GST in the near future.
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– As WhatsApp has not given any assurance to the government regarding tracing of origin of the fake messages, the Government is likely to issue another notice to the firm by next week.
– RBI has eased norms for raising overseas funds by companies in the manufacturing sector. It has also allowed Indian banks to market masala bonds as per government’s measures to prop up the rupee.
– The government has appointed heads of 10 state-run banks. Most of the posts in these banks were lying vacant for months. The list includes Central Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, Indian Bank, Dena Bank etc.
– Global tech companies are planning to oppose the new proposed legislation in India that would require all companies including Facebook, PayPal to store user data within India.
– The government has said that all e-commerce companies need to collect tax at source from October 1, hence, all foreign companies including Amazon, Google, Apple will have to register themselves for GST in all the states in the next 10-12 days.
– Directors shall lose DINs for default on disclosure norms required to be complied with till 15th Sept. The process of deactivating non-compliant DINs was likely to be completed by 17 September 2018.
M&As and tie-ups
– Swiggy is reportedly in talks with new investors like Tencent Holdings to raise around $700 million to enter new businesses and areas like hyperlocal delivery space.
– Life Healthcare, the South African private hospital group will sell its entire stake (49.7%) in Max Healthcare of India to investment firm KKR for $293 million.
– To help improve early-stage education in India, Central Square Foundation promoted by Ashish Dhawan, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Steadview Capital of UK and Google India have pooled in $40 million.
– CCI has asked industrial gases firms Linde AG and Praxair to sell off some of their India assets before getting into the $80 billion global merger to avoid the deal stifling competition here. An investigation into the deal reportedly showed that it may have an appreciable adverse effect on competition in some Indian markets.
– Creador Capital, ChrysCapital, TPG and Goldman Sachs are reportedly trying to invest up to ₹600 crore for a minority stake in Jaipur-based Ess Kay Fincorp. Ess Kay facilitates purchase of used vehicles and also provides business loans to SMEs.
– As per the statement of Mr. Anil Ambani, Reliance Communications will completely exit the telecom business to concentrate on real estate in future. He also added that RCom’s first priority is to resolve its over ₹ 40,000 crore debt.
– SBI will sell eight NPAs to recover dues worth over ₹3,900 crore and has invited bids from ARCs and FIs. Rohit Ferro Tech, Indian Steel Corporation, Jai Balaji Industries and Mahalaxmi TMT are among the NPAs.
– India Post Payments Bank has tied up with Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance to expand its product offerings across its network of 3250 access points.
– Myntra is reportedly in talks with various mall operators to open multi-brand brick-and-mortar outlets. It’s planning to sell sports, lifestyle products, cosmetics, women’s fashion clothing under Myntra brand.
– The government has decided to merge Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank to reduce the amount of capital the banks need and help clean their balance sheets. The merged entity with a total business of more than ₹14.82 trillion will be the third-largest lender in India after SBI and HDFC.
– Aditya Birla Telecom will be merged into Vodafone Idea. ABTL holds 11.15% stake in telecom infrastructure firm Indus Towers.
– Flipkart is said to be in talks to pick up a stake in Hotstar to enter Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and attract more internet consumers and shoppers. It already has some ties with Hotstar as it launched a new video ad platform with Hotstar in July.
– Mumuso, the global lifestyle retail brand, has opened its flagship store in Kolkata and plans to open another 14 outlets in cities like Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai etc. by the end of 2018. Mumuso is currently present in 30 countries and has manufacturing base in Thailand, China, Korea, Japan and Singapore.
– Brookfield, the Canadian investor, is ready to buy East West Pipeline, earlier known as Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure, for an enterprise valuation of Rs 14,000 crore. CCI has approved the transaction and Brookfield has also filed an application with Sebi.
Start-up world news
– Livspace, online home design startup, has raised $70 million in a series C round of funding led by TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs. The fresh capital will primarily be used to grow sales faster. So far it has raised $105 million in funding.
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– Ola has raised $50 million funding from Sailing Capital and China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund at a valuation of around $4.3 billion. The combined stake of both the firms will be around 1%.
– As per a report by EY, Indian financial services sector got investments worth $4 billion in the first half of 2018. This has been the highest ever half-yearly investment.
Updates on ongoing cases
– Daiichi Sankyo has moved NCLT to stay insolvency proceedings against RHC Holdings initiated by the HDFC Bank as it has a decree to recover money from RHC.
– PNB Fraud case – CBI is scrutinizing Cyril Amarchand, India’s largest law firm in the PNB fraud probe. CBI had earlier seized documents related to the fraud from CAM’s premises.
– Essar Steel update: Numetal has written to creditors raining questions on ArcelorMittal’s eligibility due to loan defaults by firms owned by L.N.Mittal’s brothers Pramod and Vinod Mittal.
People:
– To leverage MS Dhoni’s mass following, Mastercard has appointed him as its new brand ambassador to drive debit card usage in Tier II and Tier III cities.
– An arbitral tribunal has ruled that Infosys will have to pay Rajiv Bansal, its former CFO, ₹13.58 crore in severance fee. 2 years ago Infosys had decided to stop the payout reportedly after some of its founders expressed their unhappiness.
– Tech Mahindra has sacked its Chief Diversity Officer, Richa Gautam, for discrimination and harassment of one of its employees.
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