General Awareness

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY - May 2018

May 2018

May 05, 2021

Kotak Mahindra Life Appoints Mahesh Balasubramanian as MD

Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company Limited (KLI) appointed Mahesh Balasubramanian as managing director of the company. He has been appointed following the retirement of G. Murlidhar.
The appointment of Balasubramanian is for a period of three years.
Suresh Agarwal has been elevated to MD & CEO of Kotak General Insurance.

Ola Electric Appoints Wayne Burgess as Head, Vehicle Design

Ola Electric announced the appointment of Wayne Burgess, as head of vehicle design for its entire product range including scooters, bikes, cars and more.
Burgess has spent almost three decades designing vehicles for the majority of British premium automotive manufacturers, from Rolls Royce and Bentley in his early career, to Aston Martin and Jaguar Landrover to, more recently, Lotus. Notably, he was the chief designer for the Jaguar F-Type sports car, and then studio director for the Jaguar F-Pace SUV.

Blackstone Group Elevates India PE Head Amit Dixit to Head of Asia PE

Global private equity major Blackstone Group elevated Amit Dixit , senior managing director, co-head of Asia Acquisitions, and head of India for Blackstone Private Equity to the post of Asia private equity head, among a series of international promotions.
Dixit received an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Dixit joined Blackstone in 2007 from another US-based PE major Warburg Pincus.
Blackstone also appointed Martin Brand as head of North America private equity and Peter Wallace as global head of core private equity, WSJ said, quoting Joseph Barrata, board member and global head of PE.

May 04, 2021

RBI Imposes Fine on ICICI Bank for Violating Certain Rules

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) fined ICICI Bank Rs. 3 crore for violating prudential norms on the operation of its investment portfolio.
The central bank found contravention of norms in the matter of shifting of securities from one category to another.
As per RBI, the action was based on the deficiencies in regulatory compliance and was not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers.

JSW Energy Signs PPA for 540 MW of Wind Power Projects

JSW Energy's arm JSW Renew Energy sign¬ed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the supply of 540 Mw of blended wind power capacity. The PPA is signed with Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI).
The company said that this is single largest PPA for wind/blended wind power capacity awar¬ded to a company and will mark the foray of JSW in this segment.
The firm won these projects in a competitive bidding done by SECI. Earlier in March, it was awarded 450 Gw of wind power capacity. JSW aims to be a 10 Gw energy firm in this decade.

Businesses Eyeing Fresh Trade Agreement between India and UK

According to the UK India Business Council (UKIBC), businesses are looking forward to India and the UK implementing an Enhanced Trade Partnership that would address market access barriers in the short and medium term and eventually lead to a potential comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA.
The statement comes a day ahead of a virtual meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his UK counterpart Boris Johnson. The India-UK summit aims to lay a comprehensive road map to 2030.
The trade and investment partnership is particularly important, and the UKIBC hopes that the meeting tomorrow will provide more details of the Enhanced Trade Partnership initiated by Piyush Goyal, India's minister for commerce and industries, and his UK counterpart, Liz Truss, secretary of state for international trade.

Verizon Selling Yahoo, AOL Unit to Apollo

AOL and Yahoo are being sold again, this time to a private equity firm.
Verizon will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the pioneering tech platforms, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal.
Verizon said that it will keep a 10 per cent stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo.
As part of the deal, Verizon will receive $4.25 billion in cash, preferred interests of $750 million and the minority stake.
The transaction includes the assets of Verizon Media, including its brands and businesses such as Yahoo and AOL.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.

Bajaj Grabs Pole Position in India's Motorcycle Market

Riding high on exports, Bajaj Auto emerged as the largest motorcycle maker in India by sales in April, edging past Hero MotoCorp. The maker of the Pulsar and Discover brands sold 348,173 units last month, of which 221,603 units were exported.
Hero MotoCorp, on the other hand, dispatched 339,329 units during the month. A brief shutdown of its plants by Hero, due to the worsening Covid-19 situation, also helped Bajaj take the lead.
Bajaj Auto expects the strong momentum in exports to continue in the coming months even as the domestic market reels from the impact of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. A fourth of the company's sales outlets in the country remain shuttered.

May 03, 2021

Turkey Adds Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Terror Funding Regulations

A presidential decree published added cryptocurrency exchanges to a list of firms covered by Turkey's terror financing and money laundering.
According to a presidential decree published, the decision will take immediate effect and will make it easier for the financial watchdog to investigate digital-currency holdings.
The move came after a ban on using cryptocurrencies for making payments, which was introduced in response to claims that such transactions are too risky, took effect in Turkey.
The presidential decree makes "crypto asset service providers" responsible for seeing their assets are not used illegally.
Turkish authorities last month launched fraud investigations into two cryptocurrency exchanges, Thodex and Vebitcoin.

NASA's Crew-1 Astronauts Safely Splash Down

NASA's Space X Crew-1 astronauts truly deserve a big hand as after surviving 167 days in space, the longest duration mission for a U.S. spacecraft since the final Skylab mission in 1974, Dragon and the Crew-1 astronauts returned safely to Earth.
The four Crew-1 astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico right on schedule, returning to Earth after a six-month stay on the International Space Station.
The astronauts — three Americans and one from Japan — had undocked from the station, flew through the atmosphere and then touched down in the Gulf of Mexico under four massive parachutes.

TRIFED Inks MoU with 'The LINK Fund' for Tribal Development

Tribal Co-operative Marketing Federation of India (TRIFED) has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The LINK Fund, for a collaborative project titled "Sustainable Livelihoods For Tribal Households in India". Under the project, both the organisations will work together towards:
Tribal Development and Employment Generation, by providing support to tribals for increasing value addition in their produce and products;
Sustainable livelihoods and value addition, for the increase in income and employment generation through technological intervention for efficiency in value addition for MFPs, produce and crafts diversification, skill training and enhancement of value additions in minor forest produce.
The LINK Fund is a Geneva, Switzerland based philanthropic operational foundation and practitioner-led fund, working towards eradicating extreme poverty and mitigating the effects of climate change.
TRIFED is a nodal agency under the administrative control of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, working for the empowerment of the tribals community in India.

Reserve Bank to Strengthen Risk-based Supervision of Banks, NBFCs

The Reserve Bank has decided to review and strengthen the Risk Based Supervision (RBS) of the banking sector with a view to enable financial sector players to address the emerging challenges.
The RBI uses the RBS model, including both qualitative and quantitative elements, to supervise banks, urban cooperatives banks, non-banking financial companies and all India financial institutions.
It is now intended to review the supervisory processes and mechanism in order to make the extant RBS model more robust and capable of addressing emerging challenges, while removing inconsistencies, if any," the RBI said while inviting bids from technical experts/consultants to carry forward the process for banks.

Indian Bank Signs MoU with BSNL

Indian Bank signed a MoU with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to provide seamless telecom services to the Indian Bank at competitive market rates. This means the telco might be availing its services to the bank for a lower market rate than usual.
The bank is already using the services of BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited for its Wide Area Network across the country Dr. VK Sanjeevi, chief general manager of Chennai Telephones said that BSNL and its subsidiary MTNL is connecting 5,000 branches and ATMs of Indian Bank.

Yes Explores Bid for Citi's Indian Assets

Private lender Yes Bank is exploring a potential bid for the Indian retail assets of Citibank, joining a list of suitors eyeing the local operations of the foreign bank that is partially exiting 13 countries.
Yes Bank will look at acquiring Citi's retail assets, including credit cards and wealth management in India, chief executive Prashant Kumar said.
We would definitely explore that opportunity; I think they are running a process. Once all of that is in the public domain, we would definitely like to explore not only credit cards, but also wealth management and retail business. Then, depending on our appetite, we would take a call," he said in an interview.
Citibank India has 35 branches and serves 29 lakh retail customers, including 12 lakh bank accounts and 22 lakh credit card accounts. It has a 6% market share of retail credit card spends in India. Yes Bank has a credit card base of 9,47,000, with spends at Rs. 2,288 crore as on March 31.

May 02, 2021

GST Collection Sets New Record in April

The goods and services tax (GST) collections touched a record high at Rs. 1.41 trillion in April, surpassing the Rs one trillion mark for the seventh straight month in a row during 2020-21. The mop up is higher than the previous record of Rs. 1.24 trillion in March. These GST figures pertain to transactions in March, but collected in April. Hence, do not capture the impact of surge in lockdown instances in April across the country due to the deadlier second wave of coronavirus. However, the high growth trend is unlikely to sustain as the impact of economic activity disruption in April will reflect in May collections.
The collections remained over the Rs. 1.1 trillion mark for the fifth time in a row, provisional data released by the finance ministry showed. Till now, GST revenues have crossed Rs. 1.1 trillion six times since the introduction of GST.

TCS Announces Samir Sekaria as CFO

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT services firm, named Samir Seksaria as its Chief Financial Officer, effective May 1. He replaces V Ramakrishnan ('Ramki') who retired in April.
The Board of Directors, at its meeting held on April 12, had appointed Samir Seksaria as Chief Financial Officer.
Prior to this appointment, he was heading the Business Finance function for TCS. In that role, he was responsible for the financial management of the company's individual operating units, and also for the corporate financial analytics and planning at the firm.
Seksaria started his career in TCS in 1999 and spent his early years in consulting assignments involving regulatory compliance and M&A spin-offs. He moved to Corporate Finance in 2004 and played a key role in the company's IPO. Prior to being named CFO, he was heading the financial analytics, planning and business finance functions.

TikTok Appoints Shouzi Chew as New CEO

TikTok appointed Shouzi Chew, a Singaporean national, as the new Chief Executive Officer of the hot video-sharing platform.
Chew, who is based in Singapore and was named CFO of TikTok parent company ByteDance in March this year, will continue in that role.
TikTok's interim head Vanessa Pappas, based in Los Angeles, will be the new Chief Operating Officer.
Chew had served as Xiaomi's chief financial officer from 2015 to 2020, and ran its international business for a year.

T. Rabi Sankar Named RBI Deputy Governor

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director T. Rabi Sankar has been named as the fourth Deputy Governor of the central bank.
Rabi Sankar is in charge of the payments system, fintech, information technology and risk management at the RBI. He succeeds B. P. Kanungo as the deputy governor, who retired on April 2 after getting a one year extension in his position.
Rabi Sankar now joins Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Patra and Rajeshwar Rao as the fourth deputy governor of the central bank.
Rabi Sankar has an M Phil in Economics degree and has handled all critical departments at the RBI, including debt management, which was the domain of Kanungo.

May 01, 2021

IBM to Acquire US-based Enterprise Software Firm Turbonomic

Tech giant IBM has announced to acquire US-based enterprise software company Turbonomic, a deal that according to media reports could be worth up to $2 billion.
With the acquisition of Turbonomic, IBM will help companies overcome the high costs associated with managing performance and availability for multiple applications sharing an increasingly complex hybrid cloud environment.
Turbonomic provides businesses with its ARM software that simultaneously optimizes the performance, compliance, and cost of applications in real-time.

Ujjivan may Move Resolution again to Appoint Samit Ghosh MD & CEO

Ujjivan Financial Services will reach out to the shareholders who voted against a special resolution to appoint Chairman Samit Ghosh as the managing director (MD) and chief executive (CEO) of the holding firm. Ujjivan Financial Services holds Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, which is run by Nitin Chugh after Ghosh left the position in November 2019.
Ghosh subsequently became the chairman of the holding company. As Ittira Davis, MD and CEO of the holding company, moved as a director of the bank, a special resolution was brought to the shareholders to make Ghosh the temporary MD and CEO.

Axis Bank Board Approves Re-appointment of Amitabh Chaudhry as MD & CEO

Private sector lender Axis Bank said that its board approved the re-appointment of Amitabh Chaudhry as its Managing Director and CEO for three years with effect from January 1, 2022.
The appointment will be subject to the approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and shareholders of the bank.
Chaudhry was appointed as Managing Director (MD) and CEO of Axis Bank for a period of three years, with effect from January 1, 2019 up to December 31, 2021.
Prior to joining Axis Bank, Chaudhry was MD and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company.

LIC Tenth most Valuable Insurance Brand Globally

State-owned insurance behemoth — Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) — has emerged as the third strongest and the tenth most valuable insurance brand globally, according to a report by Brand Finance Insurance 100 2021, a London-based brand valuation consultancy firm Brand Finance. According to the report, the total value of the world's top 100 most valuable insurance brands declined by 6 per cent from $462.4 billion in 2020 to $433.0 billion in 2021. However, LIC's brand value increased by almost 7 per cent to $8.65 billion. There are five Chinese insurance companies in the top 10 most valuable insurance brands globally, with Ping An Insurance emerging the world's most valuable insurance brand, despite recording a 26 per cent drop in brand value. The US has two companies in the top 10, while France, Germany, and India have one insurance company each in the list. As far as the strongest insurance brands are concerned, Italy's Poste Italiane leads the pack, followed by Mapfre of the US and LIC of India.

B2B Startup Udaan Offers ESOP Liquidity

Udaan, India's largest business-to-business e-commerce platform, is offering ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans) liquidity plan worth about Rs. 175 crore among its employees, according to sources. The development comes at a time when the Bengaluru-based firm is witnessing a huge surge in business across its food, lifestyle and electronics business amid the pandemic which has accelerated the adoption of e-commerce.

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