COST Financial News

The decision unveiled today (16 July), which has been backed by the former FTSE 250 trust's key shareholders, comes after last month's news that the board had failed to secure a refinancing of its existing debt facility on acceptable terms. Total borrowings, which the lender Scottish Widows has demanded to be repaid by the end of this year, were reduced from £220m to £114.6m by the end of June and are expected to fall to £90.1m once recent sale proceeds are received. Problems getting in the way of investment adviser AEW's turnaround strategy stem from a high cost base, the need for si...

Millions of American workers who should be only a decade from retirement are finding their finances stretched by the cost of living, making saving impossible.

The Bahnsen Group founder and CIO David Bahnsen surveys the real estate market as younger homebuyers struggle with the ongoing housing crisis. 

Countries that adopted such a trajectory have manufacturing’s share at 20%+ of their gross domestic product. Despite the reforms and initiatives, India’s manufacturing ecosystem continues to face challenges on key investment criteria on account of low labour productivity, high logistics and power costs, and limited innovation.

Karnataka government announced that the 7th pay Commission with come into effect from August 1, Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge said that it was one of the demands of people and it will benefit around 14 to 15 lakh state employees. "Seventh Pay Commission was one of the demands of the people and it was also there in our manifesto. Yesterday we brought it into the Cabinet and saw the blueprint of the financials. It will benefit around 14 to 15 lakh state employees...," Priyank Kharge said speaking to on Tuesday. The Karnataka government on Monday fulfilled the long-standing demand of the state government employees after the cabinet approved the 7th pay Commission with effect from August 1.

The trust, which is currently under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority, said in a stock exchange notice today (16 July), that despite seeing «opportunity to add value to the portfolio at a property level, it has concluded that this strategy faces considerable challenges». These headwinds include «a high fixed corporate cost base, required due to the REIT structure» and due to «the issues» being dealt with by the trust at present. Four Home REIT properties uncovered as sophisticated cannabis grow operations As well as a regulatory investigation, some of the aforementio...

Budget 2024 is eagerly awaited by various sectors of the economy, the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector stands at the forefront for these expectations. MSMEs constitute the backbone of the Indian economy, contributing significantly to the GDP, to overall employment, and for exports. With the advent of the GST, MSMEs have had to navigate through new regulations and compliance requirements. In the past, the government introduced several initiatives, including introduction of quarterly returns and increase in turnover threshold to Rs 40 lakhs for supply of goods, aiming to boost MSMEs. Against the backdrop of some of the aforesaid relaxations, as per recent GST@7 survey conducted by Deloitte, 78% of MSMEs have endorsed GST. Tax compliance automation, e-invoicing and timely issuance of circulars/instructions on contentious tax issues, emerged as top performance areas for government in the survey. MSMEs demonstrate robust support (69%) for these initiatives compared with larger counterparts (which was around 60%)

₹7 lakh. Multiple rates and excessive rule variation by category cause taxpayer confusion, in addition to the financial burden of paying upfront for a tax adjustment with one’s actual dues much later—once returns for the fiscal year are filed and processed. In essence, TCS is an advance tax, with one’s money locked in for a period that could easily exceed a year.

₹3.5 trillion of assets under management by 2030, from just over ₹63,200 crore as of 30 June, Das told Mint. The state-owned company has already filed an application with the government for its FPO, and subject to approval, it will be looking to raise ₹4,000-5,000 crore via an issue of fresh equity, he said. “We require at least ₹4,000-5,000 crore of equity infusion by this fiscal in order to ensure that a healthy CRAR is maintained," Das said. CRAR is capital-to-risk assets ratio, which is a measure of a bank’s capital to its risk-weighted assets.

domestic passenger traffic in June at around 13.28 million, more than 6% from a year earlier, and nearly 10% above pre-covid levels; however, airline capacity deployment in June was up by just 7% on year and lower by 3% over May. Separately, one of the terminals of Delhi's international airport, the country’s largest and busiest, remains out of service.

Funding for AI startups in India stood at $8.2 million in the April-June quarter, declining about 91% sequentially and by 82% year on year, data sourced by ET from market tracking firm Tracxn showed. This, however, comes on a nearly 110% sequential growth in funding in the previous quarter, and 56% in the quarter ended December 2023.

GenAI to improve their customer interface and get a leg up on their younger, disruptive competitors, report Beena Parmar & Annapurna Roy A slew of banks, including the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), as well as its private sector peers HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and IndusInd Bank, are turning to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to radically change the way their services are consumed, leading to ease of use and better engagement with customers.

Celebrities and influencers are helping promote high-tech medical scans that companies claim can help catch deadly diseases, including cancer

₹295.36 trillion). Data on NSE, the world’s largest equity derivatives marketplace, shows notional turnover of equity derivatives jumped 23-fold, to ₹79,928 trillion in FY24 from ₹3,445 trillion in FY20. Around 98% of this notional turnover is accounted for by index options alone.

The Chief Minister is expected to make an announcement regarding the pay hike to more than seven lakh state government employees in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, the sources said. The 7th Pay Commission, headed by former chief secretary K Sudhakar Rao, has recommended a 27.5 percent hike on basic salary of government employees. This is expected to cost the government exchequer an additional Rs 17,440.15 crore annually.

For decades, humans have fantasized about the day machines take over and give mankind their comeuppance (just behind those pesky Martians). Sentient technology has not yet arrived to conquer us, but Moore’s Law is in full effect, and machinery has surpassed humankind in its ability to process information and data. Now, thanks to machine learning, computers can evaluate alternative scenarios beyond our capabilities. What does it mean for wealth management, and how should we mortals use what’s coming to help us improve the world, rather than concede defeat to it?

CropLife India, which describes itself as an association of 17 R&D driven crop science companies, has claimed in a media release that a proposal towards enhancement of customs duty on agrochemical formulations to 20%; would hurt the interests of the farmers of the country, in terms of higher costs of farming and non-availability of the newer products. «The idea of doubling customs duty was being proposed based on ‘misinformation’; in the last couple of months, about the “huge” formulation imports in the country. However, the actual data of import proves otherwise,» said Croplife in the release. Durgesh Chandra, Secretary General, CropLife Indiasaid,“Imported Formulations hardly constitute 20% of total imports of agrochemicals in India. Theproposal to increase custom duty on formulations will set the wrong precedent, signal uncertainty in ease of doing business, will question the stability of Indian policies and send out wrong signals for both foreign and Indian investment in this sector; apart from not achieving any significant financial benefit for the exchequer”.

Thailand’s prime minister has said that eligible businesses and individuals can register from August for digital cash handouts, a controversial program that will cost billions of dollars and is meant to boost the lagging economy

Butterfly Gandhimathi Appliances Ltd, which Crompton had acquired in FY22. Crompton took a strategic call to shift Butterfly’s focus from B2B to retail by spending on brand building and developing retail distribution network. B2B is a low margin business and reduces a company’s ability to charge a brand premium, hurting longer-term profitability.

India looks forward to being a prominent player in the global supply chain, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who will be presenting the Budget for record-seventh time, may have to look at introducing a host of measures to strengthen the manufacturing sector and an improvement in the delivery routes. “With the help of policies, India must increase its share in global manufacturing chains,” Finance Minister Sitharaman said recently, adding that India needs to have greater sophistication in product manufacturing, and the government needs to see how best this can be given policy support. «I also want to underline, much against the advice given by some economists who say India should no longer be looking at manufacturing or ramping up manufacturing, that the country must also increase, with the help of policies, its (manufacturing) share in the global value chains,» she said.

Sri Lanka will cut power prices by 22.5% from Tuesday, the utilities regulator said, as the Indian Ocean nation attempts to ease the cost of living for millions of people amid its worst financial crisis in decades. After the crisis shrank its economy 7.8% in 2022, Sri Lanka boosted power prices by 75% that September, and by another 66% the following February, to meet the terms of a $2.9-billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Industries would also see a cut of about 33% in power tariffs, the regulator added, with poorer users getting a reduction of about 2,000 rupees ($7) in their bills.