Aarohi Blog

State Bank of India (SBI) has introduced a two-tier interest rate structure on savings bank deposits. With effect from July 2017, a savings bank balance of over Rs 1 crore will earn an interest rate of 4% per annum (p.a.), while the ones with Rs 1 crore or less will earn an interest rate of Rs 3.5% p.a. The move sent the stock soaring 4% in intra-day deals to Rs 313 levels on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).. “The decline in the rate of inflation and high real interest rates are primary considerations warranting a revision in the rate of interest on saving bank deposits ,” SBI said in a release. "This is a step in the right direction and I expect more banks to cut savings bank interest rates going ahead. That apart, SBI will also save on the interest costs going ahead. This is getting reflected in the stock reaction post the development," said says Kunj Bansal, ED & CIO at Centrum Wealth Management. Analysts have given a thumbs-up to the developmen...

China Market valuations have risen considerably over the past few quarters both in the frontline indices like Sensex or Nifty and in the midcap smallcap indices. The current equity market valuations are factoring in a robust recovery in earnings growth. Retail investors are worried whether the valuations would sustain at current levels. This depends on how soon and robust the earnings recovery is and how sustainable it will be. While optically,the markets may seem to be expensive going by historical standards, bulls say that price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples are inversely correlated with the cost of capital. Further, markets typically top out at times the economy is overheated and there is a general euphoria in the markets .  Index composition/changes and index earnings composition are other parameters to check whether the markets are really overvalued or not.The truth lies somewhere in between. If the economy is close to a bottom and corporate earnings are slated ...

No steps have been taken for the introduction of Sharia-compliant mutual funds in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said. Replying to an RTI application filed by a PTI correspondent, the central bank said the Government of India had sought its comments on the launch of Sharia-compliant mutual funds by State Bank of Indiain December 2014. The RBI submitted its reply the same month, The Islamic or Sharia-compliant financial system is based on the principles of not charging an interest on deposits, as it is prohibited under Islam. "The Reserve Bank of India has not taken any step for introduction of Sharia-compliant mutual funds in India," the reply said. The RBI was asked to provide details on the introduction of Sharia-compliant mutual funds in the country. The SBI had in 2014 announced the launch of the same.However, it was deferred to make it a better and more attractive fund in the future, according to an official communication. H A...

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was on Friday disqualified from office by the Supreme Court, which sent his case to an anti-corruption court for trial in the Panamagate graft scandal.In a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court ordered that a case be registered against Sharif and ruled that a reference be sent against him and his family to an accountability court. The court also ordered the National Accountability Bureau to wrap up the case within six weeks.The 67-year-old prime minister was additionally disqualified from holding his office. The judges ruled that the prime minister had been dishonest to Parliament and the courts and could not be deemed fit for his office. The verdict was announced by the original five-member bench that heard the landmark case from January this year.The bench comprises Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed, and Justice Ijazul Ahsan. The scandal is about alleged money launderin...

When Fed taper fears jolted emerging markets in 2013,India was one of the worst hit and was forced to raise interest rates to underpin its tumbling markets. Fast forward to this year, and history has been turned on its head. Not only is the US central bank raising rates, but India is widely expected next week to be the first country in Asia to cut policy rates this year.  being concerned at India's falling policy rate premium over the United States, foreign investors are giving the country's markets the thumbs up.The rupee is rallying and the country's bonds are in demand,offering some of the best inflation-adjusted returns in Asia. Inflation, long a thorn in the economy, is at its lowest in five years, economic growth is picking up and the current account deficit is a fraction of its old self. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a national goods and services tax on July 1, India's biggest tax reform since independence in 1947, raising confidence among inv...

Tata group Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata , Temasek,BlackRock and Foxconn, all high- profile stakeholders of Gurgaon-based online marketplace Snapdeal, have reportedly given in-principle approval to its mergerwith rival, Flipkart. None of them, however, could be contacted to confirm this information. Snapdeal, too, refused to comment. According to some sources, Premji Invest and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, other investors of Snapdeal, have still not approved the merger. Getting a nod from the shareholders is important, as it is part of the clauses in the deal agreement. For it to go ahead, at least 75 per cent of minority shareholders have to approve the deal. “ Flipkart wants all the shareholders to agree to the deal. If that does not happen, then it might decide to not go ahead,” said a source close to the Snapdeal board. Some of the investors are SoftBank, ru-Net Holdings, Tybourne Capital, Premji Invest, Alibaba, Temasek, Bessemer Venture Partners, IndoUS...

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in tandem with public sector and commercial banks, has undertaken data mining on a massive scale to identify how funds have been moved in the country after November 8. The government has come down hard on individuals and businesses operating doctored accounts, having deregistered and shut more than 100,000 companies and penalised more than 300,000 others. The I-T department has also identified over 37,000 shell or paper companies channelling black money through methods such as hawala. As a part of its Operation Clean Money, the I-T department identifies individuals whose income tax return filings are inconsistent with the amount of cash deposits made in their bank accounts during the demonetisation drive. It then sends a notification through SMS or e-mail, and the individual must provide a response on the department’s website for the same. If you receive such a notice, do not panic or ignore it. First, verify that the PAN (Permanent Acco...

Nitish Kumar decision to snap ties has come as a jolt to the Grand Alliance, or the 'Mahagathbandhan' as it was popularly known, but the markets will take this development as a long-term positive for the Narendra Modi - led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, feel analysts.Reacting to key domestic and global developments, themarkets gained ground on Thursday, with the S&P BSESensex rallying nearly 220 points to 32,602 levels and the Nifty50 index gaining 66 points to 10,087 levels. In post market hours on Wednesday, Nitish Kumar quit as the Chief Minister of Bihar, ending the two-year old 'Mahagathbandhan' that included his party - the Janata Dal (United), or the JDU, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD's)Lalu Yadav and the Congress. The move, analysts say, will be seen as a long-term positive by the markets and will strengthen the government's bargaining power in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament. A loss in Bihar was t...

The news for not so pleasant reasons, the sentiment is improving for YES Bank . The stock rose six per cent on Wednesday, on strong June quarter (Q1) performance. The board of directors had also approved a 5:1 stock split, another reason supporting the price move. Net profit rose 32 per cent year-on-year to Rs 965 crore, helped by 44 per cent growth in net interest income (difference between interest earned and expended) to Rs 1,809 crore. Other income rose 17 per cent to Rs 1,132 crore. Net interest margins (NIMs), an indicator profitability, rose from 3.4 per cent a year before to 3.7 per cent. This was aided by a surge in low-cost current and savings account (Casa) deposits. The ratio of these to the total improved to 36.8 per cent, backed by 52 per cent year-on-year growth in Casa. Strong balance sheet growth, equally led by advances and deposits, was reflected in the performance. Advances for the quarter grew by 32 per cent to Rs 1,39,971 crore. Multifold e...

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said bankshave an exposure of Rs 97,681 crore in the telecom sector, which is grappling with financial stress.In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley said SBI Chairman has pointed out that stress in the telecom sector has reached "highly unsustainable levels" due to the erosion of topline and earnings of the service providers. Quoting the Reserve Bank of India figure, Jaitley said total outstanding (funded) advances by public sectorbanks to the 'communications' sector stood at Rs 63,415 crore, while total exposure to the sector worked out to be Rs 97,681 crore. 'Communications' sector includes telecom — fixed network; telecom towers; telecommunications and telecom services. For public sector banks, the gross Non Performing Asset (NPA) ratio and stressed advances ratio for the sector stood at 3.68 per cent and 11.29 per cent respectively, at the end of 2016-17 fiscal. The suggestions, in...

It’s not just large private sector banks that are offering instant loans to their customers through ATMs or via online bank accounts. Financial technology start-ups are changing the way personal loans are disbursed to borrowers. India’s largest private sector lender, ICICIBank , started offering personal loans to its pre-selected salaried customers through its ATMs. Only those on the bank’s pre-approved customers’ list based on their credit score would get the option to avail the facility.HDFC Bank has been offering instant loan through net banking. But if you don’t have a credit history or a longstanding banking relationship, you can approach start-ups such as EarlySalary.com, LoanTap, and so on As these lenders target customers who don’t have any credit history, they use a variety of parameters to evaluate the customer’s profile. They access an applicant’s social media account and build a profile after getting information through the app such as friends’ list, location, ...

The Income Tax department is probing over 30,000 cases of alleged tax evasion wherein the returns (ITRs) were revised by assessees post demonetisation, CBDT chief Sushil Chandra said on Monday.The Income Tax returns filed after November 8 last year were scrutinised against their earlier tax compliance following which these cases were detected, he said. "We are taking action in these instances," Chandra told reporters on the sidelines of an event to mark the 157th Income Tax day here. He said that after the first phase of 'Operation Clean Money', it was found that some assesses did not report about all their bank accounts to the taxman. Under the Operation Clean Money, the I-T department is contacting those whose bank account deposits were seen to be suspicious post the note ban. "We have found that they (assessees) have got more accounts...They have given less accounts in their replies (to the department). We have now informed them through email and ...

Rita Teotia today expressed hope that the current border standoff between India and China will not have any impact on the bilateral trade. She also dismissed concerns that the confrontation between the two neighbours on the Sikkim sector will affect the ongoing Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations. "I would hesitate to classify it in such a way (that it would impact bilateral trade). Of course, this is not the remit of the department of commerce, but we would hope that the regular trade between the two countries would move ahead and move in a way that is positive for everybody," Teotia said on the sidelines of the 19th round of negotiations on the RCEP here. Indian and Chinese soldiers are locked in a face-off at the Doklam area, which is roughly 15 km southeast of the Nathu La Pass that separates India and China and about 30 km southwest of the river Dramana Chhu in Bhutan . Last month, the Indian Army stopped Chinese road construction a...

Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger  called the ProPublica and Forbes collaboration to map and document the new Trump-branded hotels across the country “inappropriate and irresponsible” in an email to Hotels magazine. “It saddens me that journalists would call on others to dig into the working business deals of a private business. It is inappropriate and irresponsible,”Danziger wrote, according to the magazine. “We are a hotel company going about our business.” The Trump Organization has so far declined to release details about where dozens of American IDEA and Scion-brand Trump hotels will be located or who the Trumps will be partnering with. So we’ve asked local journalists and interested citizens to help find and ferret out the facts on 33 proposed deals that have yet to be publicly disclosed.  The developer, Suresh Chawla, had long been a campaign donor to the governor, Phil Bryant. At the fundraiser, Chawla told Donald Trump and his son, Donald Jr., a...

Shares of Wipro , country's third largest software services firm, hit a 52-week high of Rs 291 on Friday, up over 8% after the IT major announced a share buyback of Rs 11,000 crore entailing 34.3 crore equity shares at Rs 320 apiece.   buyback price is 24% higher than the average price of the stock for the past six months, which analysts believe is attractive and investors can consider tendering their shares. “The proposed buyback has been done at an attractive price. It will see the stock rally in the immediate term. I think investors can tender their shares,” said Sarabjit Kour Nangra, VP Research- IT at Angel Broking.  Brokerage HDFC Securities also suggests investors tender their shares. Going ahead, the brokerage feels organic growth for the company will remain a challenge and investors will be better off utilising the current opportunity to exit the stock .  “Organic growth engine for Wipro remains a challenge. Some pockets have shown improvement ...

Reliance Jio sets the next stage of a market share war in telecom with plans to launch a 4G feature phone, all eyes are set on what Mukesh Ambani will unravel at the group’s annual general meeting in Mumbai on Friday. The question on everyone’s mind is: Will the launch be as disruptive as its pricing strategy when it began operations last year? And will it have any serious impact on the existing players? The answer is buried in the current market scenario.With a mobile density of over 92 per cent, the country is a mature telecom market. So, any new player has to grab customers from incumbent operators. That is what Reliance Jio has successfully done to grab over 117 million customers — that is, 9.94 per cent of total subscriber base (till March end) and nearly half of the country’s smartphone users.  But,net addition per month has been slowing to half from 8-10 million earlier. The initial blast of subscribers were drawn by the promise of free service. From Septembe...

Social media importance can be gauged by the fact that Facebook now has a market capitalisation of $ 472 billion and has more than 2 billion users on the platform. There is Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube which also have a large number of users sharing content and views, discussing, debating or just consuming content every morning. Globally, social media exercises the highest influence on public discourse. It is this function which makes it important for governments across the world to register their presence on social media. But do governments restrict themselves to only having a presence on social media or do they go beyond it? The Oxford Institute at the University of Oxford is trying to study this under the Computational Propaganda Research Project. A working paper titled "Troops,Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation " studies how governments across the world, use organised teams to manipulate public opinio...

Samajwadi Party leader and former Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav on Wednesday said China, in collaboration with Pakistan, was readying to attackIndia. He asked the Centre to reverse its stand on recognising Tibet as an autonomous region of China, and support the region's independence. Yadav, and socialists of his ilk, including former Defence Minister George Fernandes, have maintained that China is India's "enemy number one", and it isn't new for the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister to caution about Beijing. Yadav's comments come in the wake of the ongoing military stand-off between India and China on the Dokalam area. The Press Trust of India (PTI) on Wednesday reported from Beijing, quoting from a mouthpiece of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), that the PLA has moved tens of thousands of tonnes of military vehicles and hardware into the remote mountainous Tibetregion after the standoff with Indian troops in the Dokalam area in the Sik...

India-focused offshore funds and exchange tradedfunds (ETFs) have received net inflow of $4.8 billion in the first six months of the year, the second highest in five years. The category had seen net inflow of $7.3 billion during the same period in 2015; however, it saw net outflows in 2013, 2014 and 2016 for the period. The flow this year largely came into India-focused offshore funds, which signify long-term money, against India-focused offshore ETFs, where the money is largely short-term. India-focused offshore funds received net inflows of $3.8 billion, compared with inflow of $1 billion for that of ETFs. “While FPIs (foreign portfolio investors) are looking at India from a long-term perspective, this could reverse if expectations of the managers on economic growth are not met,” said Himanshu Srivastava, senior research analyst - manager research, Morningstar Investment Adviser India. The portfolio of India-focused offshore funds and ETFs showed an affinity...

Pocket Aces, which creates long- and short-format content for digital consumption, will be the first Indiandigital media company to have a presence in China. The company — co-founded by Aditi Srivastava, Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita — has entered into a partnership with WebTV Asia, a multi-platform digital media entertainment company. Its content will be available on one of China’s biggest websites, Youku Tudou, which is owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba. Pocket Aces creates content across 3 channels — Dice Media (premium web series), FilterCopy (snackable and sharable content) and Gobble (all things food) — and reaches over 40 million people weekly on its own properties. This partnership will be kicked off withFilterCopy and Gobble, each having a dedicated section on the Youku Tudou platform. The content will have subtitles in English and Mandarin, and in some instances, will be dubbed as well to localise it to the Chinese market . The Chinese market is a tough...

Indian banks need to provide a bare minimum of Rs 18,000 crore additionally towards 12 big-ticket bad accounts identified for insolvency resolution, says India Ratings and Research In June 2017, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had asked lenders to refer 12 identified accounts to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the Insolvencyand Bankruptcy Code. The ratings agency estimated the current average provisioning towards these accounts at 42 per cent. The extra provisioning needed would reduce the profits of creditor banks by 25 per cent and reduce the return on assets by 12 basis points in the current financial year. Banks with average provisioning of 50 per cent on the 12 identified accounts may also need to provide additional funds to reach the new minimum required provisioning, which stands at 50 per cent towards each of the accounts. Some of the large bad loans being referred forinsolvency include Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel, Alok Industries, Lanco Infratech, and Am...

The government has ordered Reliance Industries (RIL) to pay a penalty over an arbitration award on its Panna Mukta and Tapti (PMT) oil field, the company has informed BSE in a statement on Tuesday. The company, however, said the notice was premature. "RIL as part of the contractor for Panna Mukta and Tapti production sharing contracts, has been notified by [the] Government of India (GOI) of its computation of the purported share of GOI's Profit Petroleum and Royalty alleged to be payable by the contractor pursuant to the GOI's interpretation of Arbitration Tribunal's final partial award dated 12 October 2016," RIL said in its statement to BSE."Government's demand notice is premature. The quantification of liabilities (if any) of the parties arising out of the partial award have to be determined by the Arbitration Tribunal after the Parties have made their respective submissions on quantification," it adds further . An RIL executive said the...

Goods and Services Tax Network provider Vayana Network has received over Rs 25.7 crore from IDG Ventures and Jungle Ventures in series A funding. Vayana facilitates trade between businesses and helps finance small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through electronic payments and partnerships with various financial institutions. It is one among 34 GST providers approved by the government to facilitate GST for businesses currently. The company claims to be the country's largest technology-led third party business-to-business (B2B) trade financing platform. It has processed over Rs 4,000 crore in financing via a number of lending partners like Axis Bank, Religare SME Loans, DBS and Tata Capital apart from payment facilitator MasterCard. The equity investment will be used to further strengthen its B2B trade financing network both in India and abroad. Vayana had previously raised external funding largely through Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings. "This funding comes...

E-commerce player Flipkart has sweetened its buyout offer for smaller rival Snapdealto between $900 million and $950 million, two people familiar with the negotiations said, adding that the new proposal is being evaluated by Snapdeal's board.Reuters previously reported that Snapdeal had earlier this month rejected Flipkart's initial bid of between $800 million and $850 million as its board was unsatisfied with the offer and the payment terms. Flipkart's revised offer was made for Snapdeal's marketplace and its e-commerce solutions provider Unicommerce but does not include its logistics arm Vulcan Express and digital payments unit FreeCharge, which may be sold separately, said the sources, who did not want to be named as the discussions are not public. One of the sources said Flipkart may hold back about $150 million of the deal price for 12-24 months after the consummation of a deal.Infibeam, a listed e-commerce player, has also made an offer for Snapdeal, th...

Almost six months into Donald Trump’s presidency, Americans are feeling fairly optimistic about their jobs, the strength of the US economy, and their own fortunes. That should be welcome news for the president, except for one thing: The public’s confidence largely appears to be in spite of Trump, not because of him. The latest Bloomberg National Poll shows 58 per cent of Americans believe they’re moving closer to realising their own career and financial aspirations, tied for the highest recorded in the poll since the question was first asked in February 2013. A majority expect the US stock market to be higher by the end of this year, while 30 per cent anticipate a decline. Yet they don’t necessarily think Trump deserves credit for rising markets and falling unemployment. Just 40 per cent of Americans approve of the job he is doing in the White House, and 55 per cent now view him unfavorably, up 12 points since December. Sixty-one percent say the nation is headed dow...

hacker known as 'Johnnie Walker' has leaked emails of a senior U.S. State Department intelligence official involved in Russian affairs. The hacker leaked a batch of private correspondence of a U.S. State Department intelligence official, who has been particularly interested in the Russian media andgovernment affairs and reshuffling, the Russia Today reported. The emails from a hacked non-governmental account over a two-year period were sent to "an unknown number of recipients but there is absolutely no information on who exactly was among the recipients." The sender also reportedly claimed that the U.S. State Department official was in contact with various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, as well as "mainstream media, NGOs, and international funds." The alleged victim holds "a senior position in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research". Apart from the name of the hacker's target, the co...

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has called top executives of telecom companies for a meeting on July 21, seeking their views on setting floorprices for voice and data tariffs. The demand to fix a floor price was raised by some telcos last month, when Trai Chairman R S Sharma met them for a discussion on the ongoing financial crisis in the industry. Reliance Jio’s entry in September 2016, with its free services and low tariffs, added to the stress of the telecom operators. The debt in thetelecom industry is estimated at Rs 4.5 lakh crore, and companies are facing profit erosion.  the sectoral regulator has written to all telecom companies and asked them to submit their views on floor pricing, a Trai official said. The regulator also wants to know the industry view on the upper ceiling for tariffs, in case such a cap was necessary. telecom tariffs are under forbearance - a practice which has been in place for the past 14 years and there is no uppe...

Small sized private sector lender DCB Bank will slow down on its network expansion for the next two years to concentrate on improving profitability from existing network of around 300 branches."We have added branches at a faster clip in the last two years but will slow it down to 10-15 each in FY19 (financial year) and FY20," DCB Bank's managing director and chief executive Murali Natrajan told PTI. bank has added 90 branches in the year to June 2017 to take it to 290 and will close the financial year (FY) 2017-18 with about 310 branches. By FY20, the bank will have only 350 branches."The number of branches depends on what you can do from a cost to income ratio front," he said, adding that the decision is not driven by the advent of digital alternatives. Natrajan said the bank had aggressively expanded its branch network to have a size which is "meaningful" among the small-size lenders and despite the expansion, the cost to income ratio ha...