India Financial News

Ramadan lights installation at Piccadilly Circus to start Ramadan 2024 celebrations He said that the great thing about Ramadan lights is that it gives Muslims Brits a sense of belonging. It sends a message ‘we are not simply tolerated but respected, embraced and celebrated. Also, not only Muslims, but even non-Muslims enjoy these lights.

There is demand for 40,000-50,000 employees across job roles in 2024, a 25-30% increase over last year, says staffing company Randstad. The sector is expected to see more than 800,000 to 1 million job openings over the next five years. «The demand for talent in the sector has reached an all-time high to build infrastructure, industrial parks, testing systems and R&D (research and development),» said Yeshab Giri, chief commercial officer, operational talent solutions, Randstad India.

graphic processing units (GPUs) that are deemed essential for the creation of artificial intelligence-based applications and models is a “good starting point” as it strives to stay apace with global leaders in the rapidly evolving area of AI innovation, top investors and technologists said. The Rs 10,372-crore Artificial Intelligence (AI) Mission, announced on Thursday, will operate on a public-private partnership model. It will extend GPUs as a digital public infrastructure that can offer AI-as-a-service.

Goldman Sachs has set up a facility in India to train both engineers and non-engineers in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to explore the usage of the technology in its businesses. Since 2006, Goldman Sachs has invested more than $7 billion in India. Starting off as a support function, the Indian operations have now become the second largest for Goldman Sachs globally.

finance ministry ordered state-run banks to review gold loan processes amid fears about risky debt given a rally in prices of the metal, said people familiar with the matter. The worry is that the surge led to lenders giving top-up loans over existing debt, said people familiar with the matter. In a February 27 letter to all PSU bank chiefs, the department of financial services (DFS), part of the finance ministry, has asked banks to review every gold loan account since January 1, 2022, assess the collateral value, analyse collection charges and check if there has been any evergreening. The concern comes amid a 17% rise in gold loans on a year-on-year basis and a 16.6% rally in the yellow metal's prices. Loans against gold jewellery stood at ₹1,01,934 crore as of January 26 and gold prices have touched a high of ₹65,140 per 10 grams on March 5. The finance ministry stated that it had noticed instances of non-compliance regarding the gold loan portfolio and had hence issued the directive.

foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have been asked by the Indian tax office on whether they have borrowed money to trade on stock exchanges. It’s unclear why the information was sought, but the Income Tax (I-T) department has directed these offshore funds to disclose the identities of the lenders, the latter’s source of money, and the nature of agreement between the two parties. The move to fish out such information could well be to trace any possible and indirect links between overseas portfolio managers with Indian companies and promoters, feel some of the tax and finance professionals.

an article in the MIT Tech Review, a slew of new tools. ‘Nightshade’ is one such tool that offers artists a chance to fight back against AI. The tool was created by Ben Zhao, a professor at University of Chicago.

UK and India appears set to end without a breakthrough on major outstanding issues, according to people familiar with the negotiations, meaning agreement is unlikely to be reached before India holds a general election. UK officials flew back from New Delhi on Thursday night and Friday, with people close to both negotiating teams saying there were still hurdles to be overcome in goods, services and investment areas. Indian negotiators don’t have sufficient time to engage on the pending issues ahead of elections likely in April, two people familiar with the development said, refusing to be identified as the discussions are private. That means the 14th round of talks is likely to close without further discussions.

women are taking the wheel of sport-utility vehicles, once considered the domain of men, contributing to the segment's sales surge. The share of women SUV buyers has climbed 4.5 times from five years ago amid a growing preference for vehicles with high ground clearance and higher seating. It jumped from only 29,000 units in 2018 to 125,000 units in 2023, showed data from industry sources. Meet Sonal Deshmukh, 40, a Mumbai-based banker. A fortnight ago, when she was in the market to replace her 15-year-old midsize sedan with another vehicle, she was very clear — she didn't want just another sedan and her next vehicle had to be an SUV. Last month, Deshmukh drove home the top-end variant of a midsize SUV. «I needed a car which gives me enough headroom and legroom, offers high seating without compromising on the finesse of a sedan but manoeuvres through the traffic and potholes with ease. Also, something which can be used for the weekend getaways with family. The mid-size SUV we finally chose ticked all the boxes,» said Deshmukh.

AstraZeneca is in the process of 15 new launches in India including novel products and new indications of existing assets in two years, said Sanjeev Panchal, managing director of AstraZeneca Pharma India. «We would be doing 15 new launches starting 2023 until 2025,» he told ET. The products would be in the therapeutic segments of oncology; cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic (CVRM) diseases; respiratory and immunology; and rare diseases. Some of the new products would be biologics or monoclonal antibodies, Panchal said. To expand access to its innovative therapies, AstraZeneca is working on strategies such as public-private partnerships (PPPs) for screening and early diagnosis, entering licensing deals with India pharmaceutical companies to enhance reach, and following a country-wise or tiered pricing approach in India linked to economic indicators, ensuring the prices of the drugs are relatively lower than advanced countries, he said.

Bucchigiri?!, which stars the likes of Genki Okawa, Masafumi Kobatake, Makoto Furukawa, Nozomu Sasaki and others, releases its 8th episode, and can be viewed by fans globally on Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime Video.

external commercial borrowing, professional fees, referral fees, and dividend income to finance companies and banking units, established in IIFC will be exempted from the tax deducted at source (TDS) from the next financial year. The Centre on Friday notified 14 categories of payments made by any payer to IFSC units on which no TDS is required.

panel for a comprehensive review of the country's statistical systems, which have been criticised for poor survey methodology and delayed report releases. The decision to set up an expert committee to look into all the issues related to data was taken at a review meeting held by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in February, people familiar with the deliberations told ET. «The committee is likely to find solutions for addressing recurring concerns over data quality,» one of the persons said. «PMO also favoured a tech upgrade of the entire system,» the person said.

Solo Leveling's first eight episodes have already grabbed the attention of anime fans across the globe and they are yearning for this thrill to continue in the next episode, set to be broadcasted on Tokyo MX and other TV networks followed by online availability on Crunchyroll.

pharmaceutical market registered nearly 9% month-on-month growth in February, with all therapy areas doing well except the respiratory segment, which saw negative growth in terms of value and units, according to market research firm Pharmatrac. Cardiology and anti-infective were the top-two therapy areas, data from Pharmatrac showed. «If I were to look at the IBM therapy performance for the month, the industry has done really very well. It has shown a close to 9% growth,» said Sheetal Sapale, VP commercial, Pharmarack. «And if you look at all the therapy areas, all of them have shown robust growth, except the respiratory segment.»

Election Commission of India on Friday held a meeting with the Ministry of Home Affairs to take stock of security requirements for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar and election commissioner Arun Goel held a meeting with Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla to discuss deployment of central forces for the general elections. It is gathered that officials from the Ministry of Railways were also part of the deliberations in order to plan smooth movement of central forces across the country. The discussions come just ahead of the commission members' visit to Jammu & Kashmir next week. The deliberations will help in scheduling Lok Sabha and assembly polls in the Union Territory. Kumar and Goel are scheduled to visit Jammu and Kashmir on March 12-13.

Election Commissioner within the next few days, 2024 is likely to be the first Lok Sabha election since 1996 when the poll panel will announce and conduct general elections steered by a two-member commission instead of the customary three-member one. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been a multi-member body since the 1990s and has conducted eight Lok Sabha elections in such a format. Only in two cases, that is during the 1999 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls, was the three-member ECI rendered short by one member, due to members' retirement in the middle of the election cycle.

Jaishankar on Friday stressed the need for global stability, suggesting that the last thing that the world needs to see is «any kind of disturbance», a statement that came amid increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait in the wake of growing Chinese aggression, Jaishankar's remarks came in response to a question during an interaction at the Nikkei Forum in Japan. He was in Tokyo on a three-day visit. Explaining India's response to a Taiwan contingency as a partner of Japan, Jaishankar said, «Today, the state of the world is very disturbed. We are seeing conflicts. We saw Covid. There are very big economic issues which are below the surface. The last thing that the world needs to see is any kind of disturbance, you know, at this moment. How to strengthen the stability and the growth and development of the world should be a common objective.»

Competition Commission of India (CCI) has rejected stakeholders' plea opposing the new, more stringent monetary penalty framework for antitrust activities where the maximum penalty would be linked to the global turnover of a firm. The stakeholders wanted the imposition of penalty «to be based on relevant turnover/relevant profit in line with Excel Crop judgment» of the Supreme Court, the regulator said in a «general statement». The CCI issued the statement after it notified on Wednesday its new regulations, moving on from the earlier regime of pegging the maximum penalty to a firm's turnover in the relevant market where the abuse of law has taken place.

Tamil Nadu's ruling DMK on Friday finalised seat-sharing agreements with allies VCK and MDMK, repeating its 2019 deal. However, the party, which is a part of the Opposition INDIA bloc, is yet to clinch a pact with Congress. MDMK was allocated one seat that will be announced later, said party founder Vaiko. DMK had allotted a Lok Sabha seat and one Rajya Sabha seat to MDMK during the 2019 elections. VCK will contest from two reserved constituencies — Chidambaram and Villupuram — the two seats it represents in the outgoing Lok Sabha. Party founder Thol Thirumavalavan currently represents Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha. The party will also field its nominees from around 15 seats in Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana, said Thirumavalavan.

NEW DELHI : Falling water levels in hydro power dams are raising worries, as a looming summer threatens to turn up power demand and strain the electricity grid. Thanks to last year's late monsoon, scanty winter rains and lack of snowfall, reservoir levels fell 17% from a year earlier to 73.29 billion cubic metres (bcm) on Thursday, data from the Central Water Commission (CWC) showed. The levels are also nearly 3.6 percentage points below the 10-year average of 76.06 bcm.