Deloitte Financial News

NEW DELHI: India’s audit regulator on Friday pointed to gaps and inadequacies in procedures followed and documentation of statutory audits done by top audit firms. The National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) issued its report after inspections at BSR & Co. LLP, Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP, and SRBC & Co.

NFRA) has found certain lapses in the auditing-related activities of the network entities of the Big 4 during detailed audit quality inspections. The watchdog carried out audit quality inspections of the firms — Deloitte, Haskins & Sells LLP, BSR & Co LLP, SRBC & Co LLP and Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP.

satcom, a new way to access the internet as opposed to the traditional telecom networks. The differences over how companies get spectrum has divided the industry. Many want the government to allocate spectrum while others want it to auction it.

Bank of Baroda (BoB) are the government-owned lenders leading the way. SBI said in August that it wants to hire a consultant to measure carbon footprints in its loan portfolio, and benchmark the bank’s loan mix based on high- and low-emitting sectors, while taking into account the portfolios of other local and global peers. SBI also raised a $1 billion syndicated social loan in February, arranged by MUFG Bank and Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, which it said was the largest ESG (environment, social, governance) loan by a commercial bank in Asia Pacific and the second-largest social loan globally.

Reliance Jio, country's biggest telecom operator, however had disagreed and told government that an auction is the right approach, similar to 5G spectrum distribution in India. Foreign satellite service providers could offer voice and data services and compete with traditional telecom players, and so there must be an auction to achieve a level playing field, Reliance had argued.

The Bank of Canada will likely start cutting interest rates in the second quarter of 2024, predicts the chief economist at Deloitte Canada.

Top M&As in 2023: In 2023, the Indian business landscape underwent a radical metamorphosis fuelled by a record-breaking M&A spree. The year witnessed a staggering 72 per cent increase in deal volume compared to 2022, according to Deloitte's findings. The total value exceeded a colossal USD 150 billion, according to Bain & Company.

Tech firms such as Accenture, IBM and Genpact have lost talent, said the people, along with Infosys, Wipro, TCS, HCL Tech and Tech Mahindra, with some of their senior executives moving either to consulting roles as Partners or senior level implementation and operations roles at the top four professional services firms.

Romal Shetty, CEO, Deloitte India, says “major companies have to move fast because some disruptions can be quite serious. In this round of development a lot more smaller companies make a big splash. Some key niche technologies will be able to make that big impact and some of the ones that we saw 10 years back now will get to $1 billion,$2 billion much faster than probably 10-20 years back and we see some of those real gems coming out of India.” Coming to the IT sector, will the bigger companies become bigger or will there be serious challenges for them? Will AI change the pecking order? Some of the major companies that we actually have are fairly well run professionally well run, so they will continue to remain but the important thing for them is to be how agile and flexible they are and how fast they can move because some disruptions can be quite serious. But I think in this round of development you will see a lot more smaller companies make a big splash. You will see some key niche technologies for example able to make that big impact and you will see some of the ones that you saw 10 years back now but in a much faster way get to $1 billion,$2 billion much faster than probably 10-20 years back and we see some of those real gems coming out of India.

India's moment to respond and arrive on the global stage, Times Group MD Vineet Jain said in Mysuru on Saturday, pointing to the country's outstanding macroeconomic, demographic, and social indicators. The country is now poised to take the next big jump and take a leading role in driving big ideas in three major areas -innovation in technology and entrepreneurship, education and skill development, and sustainability and environmental stewardship, he said. Jain was delivering the valedictory address at the fourth international conclave on Globalising Indian Thought, Indian Knowledge System, Culture, and Management. Professor Debashis Chatterjee, director of the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, chaired the valedictory event. «India's greatest strength is our human resource,» Jain said, as he delved into the «Idea of globalising Indian talent» in his address. He said India's current workforce is estimated at 495 million, which is expected to grow to 1.1 billion by 2050, implying that the country will make up 40% of the global workforce by then. «With a million young Indians joining the workforce every month, India will be the only country on the planet with a surplus of talent,» he said, underlining the opportunity to the Indians who have already been visible and transformative at the world's most celebrated institutions. He quoted US envoy to India Eric Garcetti's statement that more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies' CEOs are Indians or of Indian origin. Some of the most iconic global companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Starbucks, Adobe, IBM, Novartis, Barclays, Bata and Deloitte, among others, are headed by persons born, educated and trained in India, Jain said.

Money from NRE account can be easily transferred out of India. However, the same cannot be said for the NRO account. There are certain document requirements, approval needed from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and annual limit that must be adhered to in order to transfer money from NRO account out of India. Read on to know the rules an NRI must follow to take the NRO money out of India.

The rise of insurance fraud in India is a troubling issue, as innocent policyholders are increasingly falling victim to fraudulent activities. According to Deloitte's Insurance Fraud Survey 2023, the Indian insurance sector has witnessed a substantial surge in fraudulent activities within the life and health insurance domains. Around 60% of respondents noted a significant increase in fraud, with an additional 10% reporting a marginal rise. 

The Bank of Canada holds the cards for a better year ahead after Canadians’ personal finances were hit hard in 2023, according to the latest version of a multi-year survey of household finances and the state of the economy.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson & CEO, Salesforce India, spoke to ET Now at the sidelines of Deloitte-Arohan event. Bhattacharya also says: Exponential growth cannot be brought about only by the government. It cannot be top-down. At the end of the day, it needs the participation of all stakeholders, the grassroots people, the consumers, the businesses that serve them and the government. On the empowering roleof IT IT enables you to make houses out of bricks because it provides you the ability to connect and therefore it is very empowering. It is very empowering because things that you could not possibly deliver in the brick and mortar physical way, can be delivered through IT and therefore we see the increasing use of it in every single walk of our lives. I personally believe that no enterprise, whether it be business, government or in the social sector, can be sustainable or scale up without a very strong IT backbone.

Civil Aviation Ministry has discussions with airlines over the airfares and these were advised to self-regulate and keep passengers' interest in mind while fixing the fares. After deregulation of the aviation sector decades ago, the Indian government does not regulate airfares. The fares, Scindia explained, are also dependent on a number of factors such as the number of seats already sold on a particular flight, prevailing fuel price, capacity of the aircraft operating on the route, competition on the sector, season, value of INR against US dollar, holidays, festivals, long weekends, special events (sports, fairs, contests) etc. That's true of the airlines in India as well as elsewhere, but India's aviation sector has a peculiar problem — a strengthening duopoly — which does not augur well for fares, quality of services or punctuality. Many have linked recent incidents of delays and flight disruptions to the duopolistic nature of the market. A big chunk of India's aviation market is owned by just two airlines. Historically, due to various factors, the Indian aviation market has proved to be a graveyard of airlines. Very few have remained afloat beyond five years. The latest to nosedive was Go First which was grounded in May.

Their salaries ranged from Rs 29 crore to Rs 82 crore, an ET analysis of data from BSE 500 companies showed.

According to the Dentsu Creative Trends 2024 report, the five key trends are ode to joy, the memes of production, here we are now, the magic in the machine, and me, myself and us. The report further breaks these trends into sub-categories, say, for the trend ‘Ode to joy’, the sub-trends are joyful resistance, self-care as subversion and unadulterated play. 

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in the country has led to a 40-50% increase in the number of global and senior level roles based out of India in the last five years, numbers sourced by ET show. On an overall basis, an estimated 300,000-400,000 jobs are likely to be created in the GCC sector in the next 2-3 years, according to Deloitte estimates. In the fourth and concluding part of the Global to Local series, ET looks at the maturity and cultural shift of the talent ecosystem of GCCs and how it is driving the shift towards more global roles within Indian GCC leadership.

mental health concerns mounted in 2023. Nearly half a dozen counsellors and experts ET spoke with said they are getting an alarmingly high anxiety- and depression-related complaints from the Gen Z — who witnessed a multi-fold increase in stress levels amid rising fears of job loss, inroads of artificial intelligence at work, a tightening economy and layoffs in certain sectors.

With the cost of living and economic uncertainty weighing heavy, Canadians are growing concerned about meeting their financial goals, including the timing of their planned retirement, according to a new survey.

Bank of India (SBI), on Tuesday, announced that it is planning to acquire a 20% stake in SBI Pension Funds, which is held by SBI Capital Markets SBI currently holds a 60 percent stake in SBI Pension Funds. Through this latest transaction, the company is set to increase its stake to 80 percent, acquiring the additional shares for a sum of 229.52 crore. The remaining 20 percent stake in SBI Pension Funds is held by SBI Funds Management.