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Facebook  and  Reliance Jio  hit the headlines early Wednesday morning, in a break from the daily lockdown  news.   Mark Zuckerberg  announced in a  Facebook  post that the technology giant will acquire a 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms Ltd (JPL) through a fresh issue of shares worth Rs 43,574 crore. The deal values JPL—the holding company of  Reliance Jio  — at an enterprise value Rs 4.62 trillion. JPL’s equity value works out to Rs 4.36 trillion after Facebook’s investment, making it the fifth most valuable company in the country, behind its parent Reliance Industries (RIL), Tata Consultancy Services, Hindustan Unilever, and  HDFC Bank. Considering the market value of RIL and JPL, the Street is valuing RIL’s remaining but core businesses of refining and petrochemicals and others such as retail at a lesser number of Rs 4.28 trillion. This makes JPL more valuable than the rest of RIL. Read Complete Article ...

Coronavirus concerns , corporate results, and macro data will be the top triggers for Indian indices today. Investors might turn cautious after China's Hubei province reported a record rise in the coronavirus death toll on Thursday, as global health experts warned the epidemic could get far worse before it is brought under control. Health officials in Hubei province said 242 people had died from the flu-like virus on Wednesday that brought the total number of deaths in the province to 1,310. Market participants will also react to macro numbers released post market hours yesterday. Retail inflation in January rose to a multi-year high of 7.59 percent, while industrial output contracted 0.3 percent in December, against a growth of 1.8 percent in November, data showed. The figures might dent investors' outlook on the revival in the Indian economy. On the results front, almost 615 companies, including BPCL, Page Industries, Nestle India, and Apollo Hospitals Enterpri...

Business Standard : FLIPKART MOBILE BONANZA SALE DETAILS Domestic e-commerce platform Flipkart is currently hosting a four-day sale of smartphones where the portal is offering deals and discounts on mobile phones from the stable of Asus, Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple, Realme, Honor, Nokia, etc. During the sale, the online shopping platform is also offering 10 per cent instant discount on SBI credit cards, subject to terms and conditions. Here are the deals on smartphones: REALME 2 PRO The midrange smartphone from the stable of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme is currently available with Rs 1,000 instant off on prepaid payments, bringing down the effective cost of 4GB RAM and 64GB storage variant to Rs 12,990. The phone is also eligible for 10 per cent instant discount on SBI credit cards. Read the phone’s review here BS XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 6 PRO The recently launched Redmi Note 6 Pro smartphone with dual camera module on the back and front is currently available on the...

Facebook is set to offer its WhatsApp payment services to the whole of India as early as next week in an attempt to win market share, even though its partners aren’t all ready, said people familiar with the matter. The messaging app will partner HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank to process the transfers, and State Bank of India will join once it has the necessary systems in place, the people said. Facebook was aiming for a full rollout with four partners but decided to go ahead with just three as its rivals were racing ahead, the people said, asking not to be named as the information isn’t public. The entry of Whatsapp into India’s payments space has been likened to WeChat, which reshaped payments in China when it expanded beyond messaging. The pilot version of WhatsApp Pay — started with 1 million users in February — received rave reviews, threatening the market share of incumbents Google Tez and Alibaba-backed Paytm, which lack the benefits of a social network. “ Wha...

At a time when many large banks are putting brakes to growing corporate lending, due to capital constraint and exposure limits, HDFC Bank is aiming to expand its wholesale loan book through refinancing. Term loans constitute about 30 per cent of its corporate banking book, which grew by over 20 per cent to Rs 125,000 crore in 2016-17. Kaizad Bharucha, executive director, said they were working on increasing the market share in wholesale banking. The bank has a strong capital base, unlike many large entities in this segment. Total Capital Adequacy Ratio, by Basel-III rules, was 15.6 per cent at end-June, against a regulatory requirement of 10.25 per cent, including a Capital Conservation Buffer of 1.25 per cent. “ This (strong capital base) gives an opportunity for refinancing and the chance to acquire good assets. This is keeping with the prudent philosophy of the bank," he said, dwelling on growth of the corporate banking business. Many public sector banks are stuck wit...

Financial News India's public sector banks (PSBs) have continued to lag behind their private peers when it comes to selling mutual funds (MFs) to investors. Despite having a huge branch network across the country — more than half of which are in the rural and semi-urban regions — state lenders appear not excited to do a serious MF distribution business. It is worth to note that the MF sector has been attracting a lot of investments from the country's hinterland. The inflows are at historic highs and so is the burgeoning investors' base. However, this is not being adequately captured as a business opportunity by the behemoths of the banking sector. On the other hand, the private lenders are showing consistent growth in their earnings from MF distribution, year-on-year (y-o-y). It is despite the fact that private banks do not enjoy the vast branch network which their peers in the public sector possess. For instance, the total earnings of State Bank of India (SBI)...

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) on Tuesday said it has exposure of Rs 909 crore in one case referred by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for insolvency resolution. The housing finance major did not name the account. In a filing with the BSE, HDFC said the account to which it has the exposure was not a non-performing asset (NPA) as of March 31, 2017. Yet, as a prudent step it had made adequate provision against this exposure. At this stage, it does not have to make additional provision on this exposure for the quarter ended June 2017 (Q1FY18), HDFC said. In June 2017, RBI’s internal advisory committee had identified 12 dud corporate loans for insolvency resolution. These are being referred by banks to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Code 2016. The total exposure of lenders to these 12 accounts are more than Rs 2 lakh crore. Meanwhile, HDFC assigned loans amounting to Rs 2,458 crore to HDFC Bank in the quarter en...

Financial News : Nearly two years after operationalisation of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), banks have started moving to charge for peer-to-peer payments on the new platform. Country's largest lender State Bank of India has come out with charges with effect from June 1, while the second largest private sector lender HDFC Bank has also gone public with its rate structure which will be effective July 10. "So far, no bank is charging for UPI transactions but at the same time it is at their discretion to levy a reasonable fee towards Person to Person (P2P) transactions for UPI and IMPS," National Payments Corporation of India's chief operating officer Dilip Asbe said in a statement. A senior NPCI official explained that worldover, charges are levied for such transactions and added that in case of UPI at merchant transactions it is the merchant who pays while for P2P, it is the sender who has to pay.

The government on Monday asked  State Bank of India (SBI) to reconsider its decision to levy penalty on non-maintenance of minimum balance, which the bank plans to hike manifold from April 1 impacting over 310 million savings bank account holders. SBI, according to a source, has also been asked to reconsider charges it proposes to levy on cashtransactions and ATM withdrawals over specified limits. The country’s largest lender has announced imposing penalty ranging from Rs 20-100 on non-maintenance of minimum average balance (MAB) in savings bank accounts from April 1. The penalty is as high as Rs 500 in case of current accounts. The penalty for breach of MAB is being reintroduced after a gap of five years. The bank has also increased the minimum balance requirement by many times, which is as high as Rs 5,000 for account maintained with branches in six metro cities.  Read More

Banks , including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, from March 1 started imposing a minimum charge of Rs 150 per transaction for cash deposits and withdrawals beyond four free transactions in a month. The new charges would apply to savings as well as salary accounts. The bank would also cap the third party cash transactions at Rs 25,000 per day, while cash handling charges would be withdrawn. You can read about then details of this move here:  Banks to levy Rs 150 after 4 cash transactions Business Standard did a quick poll on Twitter yesterday and the results show how unpopular this move is  We asked: Are banks justified in charging customers for cash transactions in their own accounts? Out of 575 responses, 78 per cent replied in the negative while 22 per cent supported the banks' move.   Read more