Country Financial News

life insurance industry in India registered growth in July, with the total annualised premium equivalent (APE) increasing by 16.9% year-on-year. This growth was primarily driven by the private sector, which saw an impressive 18% rise in APE. Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country's largest insurer, recorded a more moderate increase of around 13.5%. APE is the sum of annualised first-year premium on regular premium policies and 10% of single premium policies written in a fiscal year.

BBC series 'Call the Midwife' will have its thirteenth season available on Netflix US in September 2024. This release continues the show's established tradition of streaming availability.

IIT Madras leading the list of best institutes in the country, aside from engineering schools, while the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore has led the university rankings, followed by JNU and Jamia Milia Islamia University. IIM A again leads management rankings, while Hindu college leads college rankings, followed by Miranda House and St Stephens college. 10,885 higher education institutions participated in the NIRF 2024, and the research showed that the top 100 institutes conduct most Indian R&D. DETAILS: The IITs have eight of the top ten rankings. The only non-IITs in the top ten are AIIMS (ranked seventh) and JNU (10th). AIIMS leads the medical school rankings, while National Law School in Bangalore tops the law school list. Anna University is at the top of the state public university rankings.

Porsche car crash case claiming these are influential persons and several key witnesses were afraid of them. Investigating officer (IO) Ganesh Ingale told court the accused, like fugitive businessmen Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, could flee the country if given bail. Two IT professionals were killed on May 19 when their motorcycle was hit by a Porsche, allegedly driven by an inebriated minor, in Kalyani Nagar in Pune. The six accused whose bail please are being heard are the minor's parents Vishal and Shivani Agarwal, Sassoon General Hospital's Dr Ajay Taware and Dr Shreehari Halnor as well as alleged middlemen Ashpak Makandar and Amar Gaikwad. Assistant Commissioner of Police Ingale said the conspiracy to replace the blood samples of the minor was hatched at Irani Cafe in Wadgaonsheri area and accused Dr Ajay Taware was contacted and given allurement. «Though Taware told other accused he would not come forward, the probe indicates Taware has a key role in the entire conspiracy,» he said, adding the conspiracy and crime took place in multiple places such as Irani Cafe, Sassoon General Hospital, Yerwada police station, the Juvenile Justice Board permises, Dr Halnor's residential campus.

independent directors and aspirants to headhunters to make it easier for companies to hire such key personnel to their boards, Ajay Bhushan Prasad Pandey, chairman of National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA), the country's audit regulator, told ET. On August 2, Pandey huddled with top executives of 17 major executive search firms, including Korn Ferry, Egon Zehnder, ABC Consultants, Kestria, Pedersen & Partners, DHR Global, Boyden, Sheffield Haworth and KPMG. «We received a very enthusiastic response from them,» he said. «They were also asked to suggest ways to further bolster the data bank and its applicability.» Pandey also heads state-run Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), with which all independent directors and those aspiring to take on such roles are mandated to register.

BSA, the iconic British motorcycle brand, will debut in India on August 15 with the Gold Star model, amplifying choices for enthusiasts while intensifying competition in the growing market for middleweight motorcycles. Mahindra & Mahindra-owned Classic Legends has been producing the 652cc motorcycle Gold Star at its plant in Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh for about two years but solely for exports to developed markets so far. Incorporated in the UK, BSA Motorcycle is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Classic Legends. Anupam Thareja, one of the three cofounders of Classic Legends-the others being Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, and Boman Irani-that owns BSA along with other legendary motorcycle brands like Jawa and Yezdi-said the Gold Star was first launched in the UK and Europe. Since its relaunch in 2021, BSA is currently available in 23 countries including Europe and the UK.

Tata started the trend at the turn of the century by buying Tetley, the first leveraged buyout by an Indian conglomerate, for $407 million, emerging as the second largest tea company in the world. In 2007, Tata scooped up Corus in the largest overseas M&A by an Indian company at $12.11 billion, just before the global financial crisis. Much of Corus’ UK operations may have shrunk today but India’s most trusted conglomerate still has deep roots in the island nation, having acquired Jaguar Land Rover, British Salt and Brunner Mond, making Tata the single largest private sector employer in the country. Last year, the group announced a 4 billion pound greenfield giga factory for battery cells in the UK, which at the time was regarded as something of a coup by the first Indian-origin PM of Britain, Rishi Sunak. Not that this could stop his defeat in the July general election.

India needs to raise its game quickly and look beyond production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes to establish itself as a global manufacturing powerhouse and create millions of new jobs, say experts. Time, they say, is ripe for the next wave of big-bang policy measures from the government to ensure that India's efforts to bring back local manufacturing in a big way pays off. Some suggested steps include creating world-class, export-oriented industrial hubs (where India is a laggard), ringing in favourable tax treaties with the country's top trading partners, bolstering logistics infrastructure (including connectivity with ports), encouraging sector-specific skill development, targeting high-volume local production of capital goods and investing in smart manufacturing facilities. These enablers, they say, are critical to boost India's value proposition and getting the biggest global players to invest top dollars in mega manufacturing capacities in critical sectors such as automobiles, renewable energy, telecoms equipment, electronics and batteries — more so in a changing geopolitical scenario when global companies are increasingly looking to cut their dependence on China and eying India as an alternate manufacturing hub.

Olympics reading the US, China, Japan, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Britain, South Korea, Italy and Germany, one is bound to ask: why do some countries fare better than others? Discussions usually attribute wins and losses to individual abilities, training and dedication. These factors are undoubtedly crucial. But there could be other determinants like economic prosperity. In each of the last three Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the top 10 medal-winning countries have been high-income countries based on World Bank's income-level classifications, with the exception of China (upper-middle income) in Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and OAR (Olympic Athletes from Russia — upper-middle income) in PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics. However, research has found a range of determinants beyond economic prosperity — team size, growth rate, expenditure on health, population, etc — to have a significant impact. We investigated the association between the total medal count for each country at the Beijing 2022 Olympics and their GDP per capita (PPP). A moderate positive relationship is observed with a correlation coefficient of 0.62.

coal ministry expects domestic coal-based thermal power plants to have a stock of 39 million tonnes of the dry fuel at the end of this month and 34 million tonnes by September-end, secretary Amrit Lal Meena told ET. The closing stocks are seen much higher from a year earlier — up 39.2% for August and 57% for September — in the critical monsoon period, when evacuation and transport of the fuel becomes a challenge. The current stocks at power plants are at 43.7 million tonnes, enough to meet about 19 days of consumption.

But India has made a strong comeback in Sri Lanka, wresting significant advantage from China. And going by the grammar and tone of S Jaishankar's just-concluded visit to Maldives, Muizzu, too, seems to be course-correcting. So, there's more than what meets the eye — a fresh dynamic that reflects changing geopolitical and economic realities. Take the Maldives. In May, IMF warned the country against a ballooning Chinese debt folio. A month later, Fitch downgraded its rating on grounds of 'increased risks associated with the country's worsening external financing and liquidity metrics'. It assessed that weakening foreign-reserve buffers and rising external government debt 'increase the challenges for the new government to meet its substantial upcoming external debt-servicing obligations and keep the currency peg to the US dollar'.

interim government head Muhammad Yunus after police officers agreed to call off their strike and return to work. Bangladesh descended into chaos last week after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India in a military aircraft while the Army stepped in to fill the power vacuum. As the news of Hasina's departure spread, hundreds of people broke into her residence, vandalising and looting the interiors, providing dramatic expression to the anti-government protests that have killed more than 500 people in a fortnight. On Monday, General Zaman said that soldiers will return to barracks once police resume normal operations. He made the comments while responding to questions from journalists at an event here.

Union Home Ministry has asked to expedite the whole border fencing construction work by conducting survey and alignment of stretches along the Indo Myanmar border in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Four Northeastern states including Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur share a border with Myanmar. The Mizoram Assembly on February 28 this year adopted a unanimous resolution opposing the Centre's decision to fence the India-Myanmar border and eliminate the Free Movement Regime (FMR). The Nagaland government and almost all organisations in the state are also against the border fencing and abolishing of the FMR.

Jindal Stainless on Monday said it will manufacture customised stainless steel and speciality low-alloy steel sheets for defence projects of BrahMos Aerospace. The company will also supply steel plates from its Hisar plant in Haryana, it said in a statement. Jindal Stainless has been accredited by BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd as a qualified vendor for the manufacturing and supply of steel sheets and plates, it added. JSL MD Abhyuday Jindal said, «We envision an India that is completely Atmanirbhar in its defence requirement. In line with this vision, we are enhancing our capabilities to meet and exceed the stringent conditions for such critical applications. Contributing to the strengthening of our country's defence standing is a matter of passion and pride for us».

Air transport is the only one direct option, but is useful only for expensive or perishable goods. The bulk of goods are delivered via Suez and Black Sea ports (Novorossiysk or others). As a result, the cargo travels triple the distance and several overloads along the route. High transport and logistics costs hinder the competitiveness of goods and the volume of mutual trade. Until now, the volume of mutual trade between India, Russia and Central Asia has been not so large (for example, $3.2 billion between India and five Central Asian countries in 2022). The obstacle is over huge delivery distances through the ports of the Black Sea or the Far East (7-10 thousand km).

For years, Canadian policymakers have been sleepwalking past a growing housing affordability crisis. Now, with homes seeming impossibly out of reach to so many and voter discontent on this issue poised to roil upcoming elections, they have been jolted awake and are looking for solutions. Any action on this issue is welcome, but the biggest fix of all has yet to be raised: giving households the buying power to keep up with rising home prices today and tomorrow by boosting Canadian productivity.

NEW DELHI : Rockefeller Foundation-backed Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) plans to support the development of 2 gigawatt hours (GWh) of cumulative utility-scale battery-energy-storage capacity, said Saurabh Kumar, vice president, India, GEAPP. In an interview, Kumar said GEAPP, in partnership with IndiGrid, is expected to commission the country's first commercial utility-scale project by the end of this year or the start of 2025. It would be set up in Delhi.

Nevada ranked the second highest auto insurance rates in the country, according to Insurify.

NEW DELHI : India had 162 million demat accounts as of June, and 93 million SIP (systematic investment plan) accounts as of July—a strong indicator of increasing financialization in the country. Still, there are places where terms like “Sensex" or “Nifty" are foreign to people. Kargil, in the Union territory of Ladakh, over 200 kilometres from Srinagar, is one such place.

Ministry of Education announced the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024 on Monday. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras ranked first in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024, becoming the top ranked institution for the sixth consecutive year. Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru has been ranked as the best university. IIT-Madras is also the best-ranked engineering college in the country for the last nine years.