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MUMBAI: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the largest institutional investor in the country, is not in a hurry to bring down its holdings in unlisted companies to align with the 10 per cent equity exposure cap mandated by the insurance regulator. According to highly placed sources in LIC, the...
NEW DELHI: The Cabinet is likely to take up a Bill tomorrow to increase voting rights of stakeholders in banks. The development comes less than a week after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee exuded confidence that key financial sector reforms Bills would be legislated this year. “The Cabinet may deliberate...
NEW DELHI: The government is examining investment treaties signed with other countries individually and as part of larger free trade agreements to identify prickly clauses that may lead to disputes in future. The move comes days after the British telecom operator Vodafone served a notice on the government, saying...
MUMBAI: The scramble to raise funds from the local bond market is set to intensify after Standard & Poor’s changed its outlook on India’s sovereign rating. The rating agency’s move is likely to make foreign borrowing expensive for India Inc. That, coupled with easing interest rates in the domestic...
NEW DELHI: Global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday cut India’s sovereign credit outlook to negative from stable and warned of a one-in-three chance of a rating downgrade in the next couple of years. S&P cited persistent external risks to the economy, high fiscal deficit, heavy debt and...
By Kalyani Shankar In the sixties and seventies the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used to defend herself from any attack by blaming the foreign hand. Similarly, ever since the UPA 2 came back in 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed the “coalition compulsions” to brush off...
By Nora Chopra The Race to Rashtrapati Bhawan is likely to intensify in the coming weeks. The Vice President Hamid Ansari continues to be the front runner as an ailing Mulayam Singh Yadav also puts in his hat in the race for the country’s top post. Hectic lobbying has...
By Anjan Roy Global credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s downward revision of India’s economic outlook cannot be said to be surprising. But at the same time this need not be taken too seriously. Interestingly enough, the S and P statement was almost a reiteration of the observations made...
MUMBAI (Reuters) – The BSE Sensex fell on Wednesday after S&P cut the country’s outlook to negative, reinforcing concerns about worsening fundamentals for the economy, while Wipro (WIPR.NS) dropped after issuing a muted revenue outlook. The action from Standard & Poor’s initially sent the Sensex and Nifty down more...
MUMBAI: Faced with radically different pricing proposals submitted by two operators of large coal bed methane (CBM) blocks, the oil ministry is taking a closer look at pricing. The two operators are Essar Oil Ltd, which operates a CBM block in Raniganj in West Bengal, and Reliance Industries Ltd...
NEW DELHI: Life Insurance Corporation’s (LIC’s) purchase of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) shares during the government’s part-divestment of its holding has come under fire from a parliamentary panel. The Standing Committee on Finance has questioned government-owned LIC’s acquisition and asked the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda)...
NEW DELHI The Oil Ministry may be on the verge of vetoing oil PSUs’ plan to acquire Asian Development Banks stake in Petronet LNG Ltd ( PLL) and instead may offer the premium stake to some strategic investor. The ADB had on August 23 last year offered to sell...
NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday said it has agreed in-principle to deregulate diesel prices, but is not considering similar proposal for the cooking gas. “Government has, in principle, agreed to make the prices of diesel market determined,” Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena said in a...
NEW DELHI:India’s national auditor has again cautioned the government it should not rush to validate the entire expenditure of Reliance Industries in the D6 block because part of the money was spent after 2008, the period for which accounts have not been audited. The Comptroller and Auditor General of...
NEW DELHI: Consumers could prepare for shortages in auto and cooking fuel supplies. Oil retailers IOC, HPCL and BPCL have informed the government that if their losses from selling fuel below cost are not adequately compensated, “it may adversely impact the supply-demand balance of petroleum products,” minister of state...
AGARTALA: Oil giant ONGC along with a Vietnamese company will launch joint exploration for oil in the South China Sea despite objections from China, a top company official said on Tuesday. “There is nothing wrong in it. ONGC-Videsh has got this assignment through an international bid and we will...
NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries has decided to relinquish a Krishna-Godavari basin block after it established that the lone natural gas discovery in the area was not viable, the company’s minority partner Hardy Oil & Gas said on Tuesday. RIL, which had won the KG-DWN-2001/1 (D9) block in the third...
LONDON: Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to buy Mozambique-focused explorer Cove Energy for £1.12 billion in cash, raising its earlier offer to secure access to a new gas frontier in East Africa. The oil major said on Tuesday it had increased its initial $1.6 billion approach to match a...