Business News at 05:30 pm on 2nd March 2023

Let’s begin with the market. Adani Group stocks rose on Thursday after 3.9 crore shares, totalling 3.5% equity of Adani Enterprises, changed hands. The deal is estimated to be worth around Rs 5,520 crore. Adani Ports, Adani Transmission and Adani Green Energy also saw block deals of 4.1%, 2.5% and 3% stake, respectively, according to reports. Meanwhile, the Supreme court of India ordered setting up a committee headed by ex-apex court judge A M Sapre to probe a recent crash in Adani Group stocks. The Supreme court directed the Centre, financial statutory bodies and SEBI chairperson to render all cooperation to the panel set up for the probe and asked the probe panel to submit its report in two months. Nandan Nilekani, KV Kamath, Somasekharan Sundaresan, Former judges OP Bhat and JP Devdatt are part of a six-member probe committee. Earlier this week, Adani Group denied having secured any $3 billion loan from a Middle East-based sovereign wealth fund, as claimed by a Reuters report.

Speaking of the Adani group, Gautam Adani tweeted welcoming the Supreme Court order to set up a six-member probe panel to investigate regulatory aspects behind the rout in Adani Group companies’ shares. The chairman of the Adani group said, quote, “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail,” unquote. The committee, headed by the former apex court judge A M Sapre, will make an overall assessment of the stock market including the recent Adani group shares crash triggered by Hindenburg Research’s fraud allegations. The group recently concluded a roadshow, marking the latest effort by billionaire Gautam Adani’s group to reassure investors regarding their investment in the companies.

Meanwhile. Non-banking financial services giant Bajaj Finserv received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to begin its mutual fund operations. In a regulatory filing with the exchanges, the firm also announced it formed two wholly owned subsidiaries, namely Bajaj Finserv Mutual Fund and Bajaj Finserv Asset Management. Sebi granted the mutual fund license to Bajaj Finserv Mutual Fund. Further, Bajaj Finserv Asset Management has also been accorded an approval to act as an asset management company for Bajaj Finserv Mutual Fund. The range of products that the new AMC will offer range from equity, debt, hybrid mutual funds to active and passive funds as well.

Moving on. Food delivery apps like Swiggy have complained to the Delhi government against challans being issued to their two-wheeler riders in the name of a ban on bike taxi services in the national capital. The food delivery platforms have also sought clarification from the government on the directive while claiming that there has been misinterpretation of the notice as the ban is applicable on bike taxi service providers. Swiggy in a letter to the government has said that food delivery riders are being fined up to Rs 15,000 in the garb of the ban on bike taxi services. A Swiggy spokesperson told PTI, quote, “The recent changes in regulations on bike taxi services in Delhi have caused confusion and disruption to food/quick commerce delivery aggregators. Our delivery executives are being wrongly issued challans despite the notification being applicable only to bike taxi service providers,” unquote.

The government on Wednesday said that it has decided to discontinue imports of crude sunflower seed oil under tariff rate quota from April 1 this year, a PTI report said.TRQ is a quota for a volume of imports that enter India at specified or nil duty, but after the quota is reached, the normal tariff applies to additional imports. The directorate general of foreign trade in a public notice said that the last date for import of crude sunflower seed oil under TRQ has been revised to March 31, 2023. Further, no TRQs shall be allocated for import of crude sunflower seed oil in 2023-24. Earlier in January, a similar decision was taken for crude soybean oil.The duty-free import of 20 lakh MT per year was earlier applicable for two financial years — 2022-23 and 2023-24 — for crude sunflower seed oil and crude soya bean oil. For crude sunflower oil, the TRQ was there till June 30 this year.

Lastly, know how the Indian share market ended today. Domestic indices ended Thursday’s volatile session in the red territory. The NSE Nifty 50 fell 129.00 points or 0.74% to 17,321.90, BSE Sensex tanked 501.73 points or 0.84% to 58,909.35 and the banking index Bank Nifty slipped 308.35 points or 0.76% to 40,389.80. The top gainers on Nifty 50 were Adani Ports, Coal India, BPCL, Adani Enterprises and Hero Motocorp while the losers were Maruti, Axis Bank, TCS, Tech Mahindra and Infosys.