Business News at 05:30 pm on 25th October 2023

Let’s begin. ICICI Bank’s share price climbed 1.30% to Rs 944.80 a day after the bank reported a surge of 35.8% in its net profit for the second quarter of FY24, helped by robust loan growth and strong core lending income. The standalone profit for the quarter reached Rs 10,261 crore, a significant rise from the prior year’s Rs 7,557.84 crore, according to the regulatory filings. The share price of ICICI Bank fell 1.75% in the last five days and 1.69% in the last one month, while it gained nearly 4% in the last six months and 4.16% year to date. JM Financial Institutional Securities said that going forward, management expects cost of deposits to continue to increase over the next couple of quarters.

Meanwhile, India’s manufacturing sector has witnessed a growth of 36 percent in job postings, said a report by global matching and hiring platform, Indeed. Data released by Indeed indicated that production/manufacturing continues to remain one of the most hired functional areas in the past year. Functional areas are teams of employees who have similar skills and expertise. However, the data also revealed a noteworthy trend: while hiring in this sector has experienced a steady upswing, there is a noticeable degrowth of 3 percent in job seeker interest for manufacturing jobs leading to a 40 percent talent mismatch in this sector. The Indeed Hiring Tracker also revealed insights on moonlighting. It said that within the manufacturing sector, 79 percent of employers are not in its favour.

In some more industry news, Vedanta Ltd. may lose its third chief financial officer in as many years just as the mining conglomerate controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal heads into an ambitious restructuring of its businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. Sonal Shrivastava, who joined the company in June, informed Agarwal about her decision to leave last month, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is not public. Agarwal is talking with finance professionals who had earlier stints in the group to replace her, and a decision is expected as early as this week, they said. Shrivastava’s departure will add to Agarwal’s woes as his holding company, Vedanta Resources Ltd., faces about $3 billion of bond repayments in the next two years.

Moving on. Wagh Bakri Tea Group executive director Parag Desai passed away aged 49 at a private hospital in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, the company announced on social media. According to the company’s marketing head, Parag Desai went for a walk near his residence on the evening of October 15 when he slipped after trying to ward off stray dogs that attacked him. He is survived by his wife and a daughter. Desai was one of the two executive directors on the board of Wagh Bakri Tea Group, who led their transformation into tea lounges and e-commerce. He spearheaded the group’s sales, marketing and export departments. He was also an expert tea taster and evaluator.

Over to technology. After Apple iPhone 15 series’ launch last month and an unexpected Apple Pencil launch recently, all the eyes are waiting for new iMacs and iPads. And, it seems that the wait may be over with reports surfacing that the 24-inch iMac may be on its way. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote in his latest Power On newsletter that the new iMac is coming very soon, on October 30. As Gurman points out, this would mark the conclusion of a period spanning over 900 days without a new iMac release, which last occurred in the first half of 2021 with the M1 chip. Gurman had previously anticipated that the upcoming iMac refresh would feature the introduction of an M3 chip.

Next up, healthcare. Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has raised an alert against 62 drug samples including typhoid fever vaccine from Bharat Biotech and Mankind Pharma’s Rabeprazole Gastro Resistant Tablets. Rabeprazole Gastro Resistant Tablets is prescribed for treating acid-related diseases of the stomach and intestine such as acid reflux, peptic ulcer disease, and some other stomach conditions associated with excessive acid production. According to the drug alert of September 2023 issued last week, out of 1188 tested samples, 1126 were declared as of standard quality. Moreover, none of the drug samples were declared as spurious.

Lastly, let’s see how the share market performed today. Indian equity indices ended lower for the fourth consecutive session on October 23 with Nifty below 19,300. Biggest losers on the Nifty included LTIMindtree, Adani Enterprises, Hindalco Industries, Adani Ports and UPL, while gainers were M&M and Bajaj Finance. All the sectoral indices ended in the red with Metal, Information Technology, Realty, Oil & Gas, Power, Capital Goods down 2-3 per cent each, while Auto, Bank, FMCG, Pharma down between 1-2 percent. BSE Midcap index shed 2.5 per cent, while Smallcap Index declined 4 percent.