Pandemic Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India’s central bank has quietly become a key pillar of macroeconomic stability. It is not just a monetary authority, but increasingly playing a role as a fiscal shock absorber. This deserves appreciation and caution.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has managed an extraordinarily hard decade.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Are you better off than when Jerome Powell assumed the chair of the Federal Reserve Board on Feb. 5, 2018? From the narrow viewpoint of investors, the answer would be yes.Over those eight-plus years, the central bank and the markets experienced a once-in-a-century pandemic, a near-total shutdown of major economies, and nearly an acute seizure of financial markets, followed by the biggest surge in inflation in over four decades.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.I knew hantavirus had reached a tipping point when my own 12-year-old called out to us after bedtime to ask: “What is hantavirus, and do we have to worry about it?”The virus that started with an outbreak on a cruise ship has infiltrated the public consciousness, and it feels like déjà vu: resurrecting painful memories of the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down the world.There are lots of questions, misinformation and, understandably, fears. But what do we actually know about the hantavirus that has infected at least 11 people, killed three of them and led to the quarantining of dozens more across the globe? How infectious—or not—is it, and how does it spread?U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Honda Motor managed to stay profitable through a global financial meltdown, natural disasters, a safety crisis and the pandemic. Then came America’s electric-vehicle whiplash.The Japanese company, the fifth-largest automaker in the U.S. by sales, is confronting some of the steepest challenges it has faced in its nearly seven decades as a public company.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For the last few years, Jerome Powell would walk past a portrait of Arthur Burns on his way to his office, addressing him silently.I’m not going to be you.Burns, the Fed chair under Richard Nixon, embodied two failures: He allowed inflation to get out of control, and he yielded to a president who wanted lower interest rates.Powell faced both hazards—inflation and presidential pressure—and more during his eight years as chair. The Fed won broad credit for its novel pandemic response, took a share of the blame for the high prices that followed and confounded predictions by bringing inflation down without a recession.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Being a new parent transforms one’s relationship with their city. The park is central to this change as it becomes an essential third space. These outings are not merely recreational, but also require active engagement with everything, from the grass to the play area and even the security guards.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.High stock valuations have investors on edge about the next stock market crash. Famed trader Paul Tudor Jones, who famously predicted the 1987 crash, isn’t just worried—he’s envisioning exactly how the next big one could play out.The founder and chief investment officer of Tudor Investment, which has more than $100 billion of assets under management, Jones laid out his view of how and when the next bear market could hit and how big of a wallop it could pack.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.When was the last time you engaged in friendly banter with your barista, chatted with your neighbor or called your mother?Chances are, you placed your latte order on an app and ignored your neighbor when you pulled into your driveway. Your mom? She likely had to settle for a text.Digital interactions are replacing face-to-face interactions with loved ones and strangers.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A $10 million purse? Believe it. A Hermès handbag owned by the late fashion icon Jane Birkin sold for that eye-popping, record-setting sum last summer at Sotheby’s in Paris.Now, if you can afford a $10 million pocketbook, there’s no doubt you have plenty of dough.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Earlier this month, local business leader Tom Harris picked up eyedrops at a drugstore near his office without needing an employee to retrieve them from behind a locked plexiglass barrier. In that seemingly mundane act, he glimpsed evidence of the turnaround for New York City’s shoplifting epidemic.Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, a Manhattan business group with some 2,600 members, said he once fielded several calls a day from retailers about their problems with theft.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Sam Altman, the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI, said at a finance conference in October 2023 that he and his “CEO friends” were running a betting pool on when the first one-person billion-dollar company would be created thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). He didn’t divulge their identities nor their precise predictions.

If FY26 had a defining feature, it was the breadth of the sell-off. Indian equities didn’t just correct, they saw a deep, cross-sector downturn that dragged the market lower even as global peers surged ahead.From defensive sectors like FMCG to rate-sensitive realty and global-facing IT, few corners of the market were spared, underscoring the unusual breadth of the downturn.

State of Working India (SoW) report says India’s demographic bulge will stop expanding in four years. The share of its working-age population will begin declining in 2030.

rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and global volatility has kept hiring sentiment largely muted, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) campuses saw their median compensation rising 25-40% from that of the 2020 pandemic-era batch, as the 2026 cohort got picked up for specialized roles.As per its press release, IIM Calcutta’s median pay package was ₹35 lakh in 2026, up nearly 3% from ₹34 lakh last year and more than 37% higher that the 2020 level of ₹25.5 lakh. IIM Lucknow matched the momentum at ₹32.9 lakh, over 6% higher than ₹31 lakh a year ago and a massive 43% up from the ₹23 lakh annual package of 2020, its press statement said.

Singapore-based Crypto.com said last week that it was cutting 12% of its workforce. Earlier, Atlassian and Block had cited AI adoption for job losses. But what’s lacking in these pronouncements is the evidence of how, exactly, AI is replacing workers.

FPIs have remained underweight in India for a second straight year, with their ownership in National Stock Exchange-listed companies falling to a 15.5-year low of 16.7% in the December 2025 quarter, from 17.4% a year ago, NSE data showed."De-escalation aside, certain data points pertaining to the conflict seem to have become more severe, resulting in FPIs moving out of risky emerging market (EM) assets to the safety of the dollar," said Swarup Mohanty, chief executive of asset management company Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India).Mohanty said the latest attrition has come on top of the tech and AI impact on India, which had been “playing on the FPIs' mind”. Jyoti Jaipuria, founder of portfolio management services firm Valentis Advisors, attributed the plunge in FPI equity assets to a reduction in earnings visibility due to the country's "particular susceptibility" to oil price shocks, and to slowing flows to EMs specifically and to equities in general, consequent to the conflict.Since the start of the war and the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude futures have surged 56% to $112.19 a barrel as of Friday, dragging the rupee down 3% to 93.71 against the US dollar on concerns over the impact of high crude prices on India’s current account deficit (CAD).A $10-per-barrel increase in oil prices raises India's CAD as a proportion of its gross domestic product by 0.4%, according to Jaipuria.The surge in crude and the rupee’s fall dragged the benchmark Nifty down 8.2% to 23,114.5 on Friday.

Five major central banks—the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the Bank of Japan—met this week to deliver their rate decisions. Four of the five opted to pause and continue with existing policy rates.

₹10 trillion in market capitalization vanished in a single session. Every one of the 30 Sensex stocks closed in the red. All 16 sectoral indices fell.

The disclosure is significant as the proposed deal is a 100% share swap, meaning Unacademy’s investors may receive upGrad stock instead of immediate liquidity, with the valuation to be made public only at closing.Mint has learnt from people familiar with the matter that the break-fee clause will apply to both sides, though Mint could not independently verify the exact triggers in the term sheet.Mint explains what Screwvala’s public reference means for the proposed upGrad-Unacademy deal.Unacademy, founded in 2015, surged during the covid-19 pandemic to a $3.5 billion valuation in 2021, raising about $880 million from marquee investors to date. But the post-edtech-boom funding slump and Byju’s crisis hit the sector, weakening its position in talks with upGrad, which valued it at $300-400 million.

Mint’s analysis of historical data.Nomura recently projected that Indian equities could end the year in the red if crude oil prices remain above $100 per barrel, driven by disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts estimate that every $10 increase in crude prices could widen the deficit by roughly $20 billion, or about 0.5% of GDP.The brokerage also expects a potential 10-15% downside to FY27 earnings estimates for the Nifty 50 if elevated oil prices persist.

Mint explains.Indian nationals are the largest foreign real estate investor base in Dubai, accounting for over 20% of all foreign property purchases. In 2025, Indians and people of Indian origin invested up to ₹95,000 crore in residential properties, according to estimates by Anarock Property Consultants. This is a sharp rise from 2023, when they bought properties amounting to ₹37,000 crore.