Experts Financial News

Disney and Reliance have offered some concessions to secure an India antitrust approval for their $8.5 billion media merger, but are unwilling to sell any cricket broadcast rights, the biggest prize in the deal, two sources familiar with matter said. Reuters reported earlier this week that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) sent a warning notice to the companies expressing concern that their merged entity will have a tight grip on most cricket rights for TV and streaming in India, and can hurt advertisers. In their response, the companies have offered to go easy on advertising rate hikes and not increase them unreasonably, the sources said.

debit and credit cards–is no longer required to validate tokenised card payments, the bank said. Card tokenisation happens when cardholders save their cards online on e-commerce sites or mobile apps. Customers save their cards on apps or sites where they transact frequently to avoid typing out the full details of the card each time they make a payment.

South Korean banks are refusing to follow the nation’s crypto exchanges into a “deposit rate war” as platforms scramble for market dominance.

On the options front, the maximum Call open interest (OI) is at the 25,000 strike, followed by the 25,500 strike, while the maximum Put OI is at the 24,500 strike, followed by the 24,600 strike.

CDSL), in its board meeting held in July, had announced a bonus issue of shares for its eligible shareholders in the ratio of 1:1, for which the record date was fixed as August 24. “With reference to the captioned subject and our earlier intimation dated July 02, 2024, and pursuant to the provisions of Regulation 42 of the SEBI Listing Regulations, we wish to inform that the Company has fixed the 'Record Date' as Saturday, August 24, 2024,” said the company in a filing to the exchanges.

Reserve Bank of India allowed foreign currency cards on RuPay. In FY24, there were 968 million transactions via RuPay cards, lower than 1.26 billion in FY23. The quantum of transactions remained unchanged at ₹2.4 trillion across both years.

Buy or sell stocks today: The Indian domestic stock market index Nifty closed higher for the fifth consecutive session on Wednesday, August 21. The index was fueled by the gains from the domestic FMCG and IT sector, closing 0.29 per cent higher at 24,770.20 points, compared to 24,698.85 points at the previous market close. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex closed 0.13 per cent higher at 80,905.30 points after Wednesday's session, compared to 80,802.86 points at the previous close.

However, now, Trump fans cannot be so sure of a victory as Harris' approval rating and popularity is slowly going off the charts, which did not seem to have a remote chance back in June.

Divers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily have found four bodies as the search for missing passengers persisted and questions intensified about why the sailboat sank so quickly

Approvals for new coal-fired power plants have dropped sharply in China after a flurry of permits in the previous two years raised concern about the government’s commitment to limiting climate change

«The Modi 1.0 and the 2.0 had such a strong emphasis around the infra space and so I think there was a lot of confidence that the government through a mix of disinvestment, divestment, professionalising these companies, getting in private sector honchos to head it, and would improve their performance and so that, I would say, in a way, helped these stocks,» says Sunil Subramaniam, Market Expert. You just heard it from our research analyst, the kind of valuations some of these fancy defence, railway names are sitting at, the kind of growth trajectory and more importantly of late the kind of stock fall some of these stocks have seen, both on a monthly as well as on a weekly basis. Having said that, I mean, if you were to just elongate the chart for another one or two years, perhaps, a 30% fall is negligible, given the kind of returns some of these stocks have made. So, what is the right way of looking at the recent fall that some of these names have seen? Sunil Subramaniam: I think for an existing investor who got in early into this space, it is good to book profits. And the reason I say that is that A) a huge valuation gap between the same private sector related companies and the public sector. So, there was a catch-up rally happening because historically, they have always been at a discount to the private sector.

Defence sector based mutual funds (including active and passive funds) have lost upto 5% in the last one month. These schemes gave a negative average return of around 4.04% in the said period. Only two funds based on the defence sector have completed one month of existence in the market. In the last one month, Nifty India Defence — TRI also lost around 5.13%. Motilal Oswal Nifty India Defence Index Fund, a passive fund based on defence sector, lost the most of around 5.21% in the last one month. Launched in July 2024, the scheme manages assets of Rs 2,330 crore as on July 2024.

Diversified auto ancillaries’ revenue growth stood at 23% YoY in Q1FY25, while their EBITDA increased by 29% YoY during the same period. In comparison, auto OEMs experienced a 9% revenue increase, with their EBITDA growth at 21%, according to a Nuvama note. The coverage included Bharat Forge, Endurance Technologies, CIE Automotive, SAMIL, Sona BLW Precision, Uno Minda, and Varroc Engineering.

Hemang Jani, Independent Market Expert, says the party in defence stocks lasted for a good time and it was much more exciting than we thought it could be. But now that the reality check has come to the basics in terms of the valuation and growth we are looking at. When you see the numbers that some of the companies have reported, they are not displaying that. As a theme, the party is over. But as an allocation stock, if one wants to take a longer-term view, maybe BEL, which is still growing at 30-35%, is not bad. Also, HAL is growing at a very high rate. These are the two names that Jani is comfortable with. One pocket of the market which got active yesterday after a long gap was small to mid to higher NBFCs, the Shriram Finances of the world. Chola came back after a weakish number, as did Sammaan Financial, the erstwhile Indiabulls Housing. Is this space bottoming out? Fusion or even Credit Grameen showed some spark. Is this space ripe for stock picking or is it too early to get into NBFCs? Hemang Jani: We are seeing a good momentum in some of the pockets as you mentioned, whether it is Shriram Transport Finance or Chola. Indiabulls Housing is a different stock altogether. A part of that has something to do with the fact that within the banking vertical you are seeing a part of the money being diverted from the banks to the NBFC and the insurance because as we all know the banks are grappling with the growth on the deposit side. NIMs are under pressure. And the sector is underperforming.

The Nifty future closed positive with gains of 0.45% at 24,707 levels on Tuesday. The India VIX was down by 3.46% from 14.32 to 13.82 levels.

JP Morgan maintained an overweight rating on Cyient while BofA and UBS have a buy call on Varun Beverages and Avenue Supermarts respectively.

New Delhi: An innocuous piece of India's audit rules has come under scrutiny, after several alleged audit lapses that paved the road to spectacular business bust-ups were traced back to it. However, fixing it could be tricky, audit industry executives said. When a company raises money from the public and transfers it to a subsidiary, and further to the company's promoters, the diversion may go unnoticed in audits.

Digital connectivity in India is set to get a major boost, with three large undersea cable projects — 2Africa Pearls, IndiaAsia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX) — slated to go onstream between October and next March, expanding existing capacity by more than four times, said people familiar with the matter. 2Africa, among the longest subsea cable systems in the world, spanning over 45,000 km, has investments from Bharti Airtel and Meta, among others. It will have a capacity of 180 terabits per second (tbps), connecting 33 countries, including Sunil Mittal-led Airtel’s landing station in Mumbai. IAX and IEX involve contributions from Reliance Jio, among others. Boost for Data Centre Operators:

Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (backed by Bhagnani), Maidaan, Yodha, Sarfira, Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha, and most recently, Khel Khel Mein, have tanked at the box office. That said, with the impressive numbers for films like Stree 2, and Kalki 2898 AD earlier, industry experts say well-made films that have upped the game on scale and spectacle along with compelling stories, are finding their audience.

audit affiliates of top professional services firms after the regulator fined BSR & Associates LLP, a KPMG affiliate, ₹10 crore and banned two of its auditors for alleged lapses in audit of Coffee Day Enterprises (CDEL) where the audit firm had relied on subsidiary auditors while preparing consolidated audit reports. All audit firms have multiple audits where the firms rely on subsidiary auditors' work when preparing consolidated audit reports for parent companies. In the CDEL case, BSR & Associates had relied on the work of auditors of its subsidiaries while auditing the parent company.

Experts meet in Bangkok this week to advance what would be the first international treaty to tackle the surging problem of plastic pollution