Business News at 10:00 am on 14th May, 2024

Let’s begin with the major update, Mutual fund houses launched 10-12 equity new fund offers (NFOs) every month in the last three years. That the flood shows no signs of subsiding is evident from the number in 2024. Already, 67 new schemes have been launched so far this year, indicating an increase in momentum. Almost half of these schemes are actively managed. For the first time in three decades, that is, ever since the private sector mutual funds started operations in November 1993, the number of equity and hybrid NFOs crossed the 100-mark every year between 2021 and 2023, according to data from Value Research. What has also helped is the introduction of new indices by both the BSE and the National Stock Exchange. Moving on, In the largest deal in the affordable housing finance space, the board of Shriram Finance on Monday approved the sale of its housing finance subsidiary Shriram Housing Finance (SHFL) to Warburg Pincus for Rs 4,630 crore. Warburg Pincus will acquire the stake through its affiliate Mango Crest Investment. This is also the US-based private equity firm’s biggest deal in India. The proposed transaction is valued for equity and convertible instruments of the housing finance company. Shriram Finance will receive Rs 3,909 crore, along with certain additional amounts based on occurrence of identified events.The proposed transaction is subject to receipt of necessary regulatory approvals and fulfilment of other customary conditions. The transaction is expected to be completed by February 7, 2025. In other news, The government is working out a mechanism to help exporters handle the investigations by importing countries on support extended to them under the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) that sometimes leads to the imposition of countervailing duties. The US investigators have visited exporting units in the past to verify whether the benefit given under RoDTEP is in proportion to the taxes on inputs. In many cases the exporters have not been able to fully establish the link because of some gaps in the documentation. An official said that the countervailing duties have been imposed by the US and the European Union on certain units only and that too because they could not produce the right documents. Meanwhile, The country would require over Rs 4.2 trillion investment under the public, private partnership (PPP) mode by 2030 for ubiquitous broadband penetration, according to estimates from EY. The same assumes significance as the country, especially the rural areas, lag in fixed or wired broadband penetration compared to developed nations. According to Broadband India Forum, even as the average data consumption of 187 GB per month in India on fixed broadband is 10 times higher than mobile data consumption, the same is still significantly lower than the US data consumption of 641 GB per month. Furthermore, fixed broadband subscriptions in India are a mere 2.85 per 100 persons and it is almost one-fourth of the global average. Up next, Bharti Airtel and Google on Monday announced a partnership to offer cloud and generative artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to businesses in the country. The companies will provide businesses with solutions like geospatial analytics, location intelligence for spotting trends, predictive capabilities, market assessment, site selection, risk management, and asset tracking. Other solutions such as voice analytics for conversational applications trained across languages, marketing technology to forecast consumer behaviour, perform tailored audience segmentations, and streamline content creation, will also form part of the offering. For Airtel, Google’s partnership will help to provide an updated suite of cloud managed services to its customer base of over 2,000 large enterprises and 1 million emerging businesses. Notably, Google is an investor in Airtel with a 1.18% stake. Moving ahead, Public sector lender Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) will likely approach the central government to extend by a year the deadline to lower its promoter stake in the bank to below 75%, MD & CEO Ajay Kumar Srivastava told FE. The government has set August as the deadline for five PSBs to meet the minimum public shareholding (MPS) norms. As of March, the government held a 96.38% stake in IOB. IOB’s board of directors has already approved raising Rs 5,000 crore during FY25 via equity to trim the promoter stake. However, this would only lower government stake to 83-84%, Srivastava said. According to Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) rules, a company is required to have MPS of 25% within three years after listing. Lastly, let’s take a look at stocks to watch today. GIFT Nifty indicated that Indian equity indices BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 may see a positive opening on Tuesday. Here’s a look at the key stocks to watch in trade. GIFT Nifty traded up by 46.50 points or 0.21% at 22,213 indicating a positive opening for domestic indices NSE Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex on Tuesday. Previously, on Monday, the NSE Nifty 50 ended up by 48.85 or 0.22% to settle at 22,104.05 while the BSE jumped 111.67 points or 0.15% to 72,776.14. Here are the top stock to watch before market opens on Tuesday May 14, 2024 – Zomato, DLF, Sanofi, JSPL, Shriram Finance, UPL, Cochin Shipyard, RVNL.