Security Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi’s) measures to cool the retail frenzy in options trading appear to have begun yielding results, with small-trader participation declining almost 20% in FY26 from the previous year.Equity options, which comprise index and stock options, are the most widely traded derivative products within the futures and options (F&O) segment. The fall in participation is thus a clear outcome of Sebi’s measures, experts said.According to NSE data, the number of investors trading less than ₹10,000 each on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) fell by two-fifths to 450,000 in FY26, from 780,000 in FY25, according to data from the stock exchange.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: Three weeks after its official inauguration, the Noida International Airport faces fresh uncertainty over the start of commercial flights, as a key security clearance for its chief executive is still pending. The nod from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS)—essential before operations can begin—has yet to come through, raising the possibility of a delay to the airport’s planned mid-May launch.The Noida International Airport at Jewar in Uttar Pradesh, 100 km off Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 28 March 2026.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.SÃO PAULO—A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest criminal organizations, reshaping global cocaine flows from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and edging into the U.S.Long under Washington’s radar, the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, started out as a disgruntled band of inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s.It now has some 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets with a vast network of affiliates—making it the largest criminal group in the Americas by some estimates, operating in nearly 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica.“The PCC has become a truly transnational group,” said Lincoln Gakiya, Brazil’s top PCC prosecutor, who has tracked its rise for two decades. “I believe it is now the fastest-growing criminal organization in the world.”With the scale of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, the PCC has helped drive record cocaine seizures in Europe and sparked violent turf wars in the heart of major ports in Belgium and the Netherlands.Prosecutors and police in Brazil are calling on President Trump to label the PCC a Foreign Terrorist Organization, joining more than a dozen other Latin criminal networks.The PCC is organized crime at its most organized, prosecutors say.Unlike the narco-tycoons of Mexico, the heavily armed Colombian cocaine militias or the flashy drug lords of Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command gang, PCC members keep a low, businesslike profile, seeking fortune not fame—and shying away from the kinds of gratuitous violence that attract police and TV news crews.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Jio Financial Services Ltd, the financial services arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, plans to use its newly-launched marketplace to sell products that are otherwise not within its risk appetite, managing director and chief executive officer Hitesh Sethia said on Monday.“For example, we offer personal loans through half a dozen lenders on our marketplace. We are not licensed to issue credit cards, and so we have over 50 credit cards (on the marketplace); business loans are something we are starting to offer,” Sethia said over phone.In February, Jio Financial Services launched its marketplace for financial products through the JioFinance app.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator by market share, has raised the price of one of its long-validity prepaid plans, a move analysts said may be aimed at testing the waters for broader tariff hikes.On Sunday, Airtel raised the tariff of its ₹859 mobile plan — valid for 84 days with 1.5 GB of data per day — to ₹899, according to its website. It also discontinued its ₹799 plan with 77-day validity.The tariff hike is particularly significant because headline prices across all plans have remained unchanged for the past two years.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Utilities plan $1.4 trillion in capital expenditures through 2030, a 21% increase, driven by AI’s rising power demands.Global data center electricity demand is projected to double by 2030 to 945 terawatt-hours, with over 800 new centers in development.AI power infrastructure companies like GE Vernova (up 38%) and Vertiv (up 80%) have strong backlogs and high valuations.Tech is leading the market again as the war in Iran recedes and first-quarter earnings come in strong. It’s a great sign for companies supplying the industry’s insatiable thirst for power generation and infrastructure.Utilities plan to spend $1.4 trillion on capital expenditures through 2030, up 21% from estimates last year, according to the nonprofit PowerLines.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.FOR DECADES Americans have fretted that China might dump its vast holdings of Treasuries, undermining the dollar. Global investors therefore snapped to attention when Bloomberg, a news agency, reported on February 9th that China’s regulators have warned commercial banks against holding too many American government bonds. Some banks have been told to cut their exposure.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bajaj Consumer Care Ltd made a striking recovery in FY26. Consolidated revenue increased 21% year-on-year to ₹1,165 crore, and Ebitda margin rose 575 basis points (bps) to 19%.Its growth portfolio, comprising products other than its flagship Almond Drops Hair Oil (ADHO), recorded annual sales of ₹225 crore, which the company aims to more than double to ₹500 crore over the next three years.The core Bajaj ADHO brand recorded revenue growth of more than 20% for the full year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.If you want proof that multilateralism is limping and hobbling, all you have to do is look at the latest ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held last month. The talks ended without any consensus over a global trade deal, adding yet another episode to years of paused global trade agreements.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: With its iron ore mining leases in Jharkhand and Odisha set to expire by 2030, Tata Steel is preparing for a future that could see fewer permanent workers.The company has slowed hiring of permanent blue-collar workers over the past two years and is sensitizing its existing workforce and unions to a potential transition, including the possibility of moving to a new mine owner.“Tata Steel will see its number of permanent workers transition after 2030 as some of its captive iron ore mining leases come up for expiry,” Atrayee Sanyal, chief people officer at Tata Steel Group told Mint in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Bombay House in Mumbai.At the end of FY25, Tata Steel’s permanent blue-collar workforce stood at 31,794, down by 585 workers compared to FY24, according to the company.Sanyal outlined three possible scenarios for the workforce, depending on the outcome of mandatory auctions for the mines under the amended Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act. If Tata Steel retains the leases, there will be “no impact on workers”.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On 13 April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) returned Ujjivan Small Finance Bank's (SFB) application for a voluntary transition to a universal bank, asking it to diversify its loan portfolio. RBI had also returned Jana SFB's application in October 2025 for failing eligibility criteria under its April 2024 framework for SFB-to-universal bank transitions. Jana and Ujjivan are expected to reapply.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Every few years, a sector comes into focus and goes from nice to becoming a non-negotiable.Cybersecurity hit that inflection point a while ago, during the pandemic, but the surprising thing is, it’s not going back any time soon.In 2024 alone, we saw headline-grabbing incidents that rattled entire industries, from the CrowdStrike outage that disrupted airlines, hospitals, and businesses globally, causing estimated losses of over US$5 billion, to relentless ransomware campaigns targeting healthcare and government infrastructure.If anything, those events didn't slow down the investment in the sector, but they accelerated it.The numbers clearly back that up. Global cybersecurity spending is projected to hit $248 billion in 2026, a 12.5% jump, even as broader tech stocks face a rough ride this year.On top of this, worries around AI deepfakes continue to surge, following a 250% rise between 2024 and 2025.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has sought the latest quarterly profit-and-loss (P&L) statements of clients from top brokers to assess the full-year financial impact of equity derivatives trading on individual investors, according to two broking officials."The regulator had directed us to submit the data sometime last week," said one of the officials, requesting anonymity."The January-March data of the previous fiscal year has been called for by Sebi, which will give them a view of the full year's P&L. Earlier, we had submitted Q1-Q3 data after the end of each quarter," said the second official.An email sent to Sebi went unanswered till press time.Alarmed by losses of individuals trading in the equity derivatives segment (EDS), Sebi has been requisitioning quarterly P&L data from the top 10 equity brokers whose clients account for 90% of the derivatives volumes on NSE and BSE, per the second official.The regulator had used the data for two studies—one in September 2024 and the other in July last year—to analyse the P&L of individual traders from FY22 through FY25.The studies showed that individual or retail traders suffered rising losses during this period.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Centre is exploring plans to sharply raise the national daily minimum wage to ₹350-450, at a time workers’ protests have prompted wage hikes in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.The Union labour ministry is working on fixing minimum wages for all workers in skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled categories, two people aware of the development said. Once a national floor is set, states will be compelled to revise their minimum wages accordingly, as wages cannot be set below the national floor.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Bosch Ltd’s shares have been on a roll this month. The auto component company’s stock is up almost 30% so far in April from the 2026-year-to-date low of ₹28,745 apiece on 30 March.The stock had fallen 21% last month after the West Asia war began and the disruption in natural gas supplies forced one of its suppliers to declare force majeure.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: After helping to secure funding to clear KTM’s dues, Bajaj Auto has shifted focus to cost cutting and tighter governance at the Austrian premium motorcycle maker, its largest acquisition, a top executive told Mint.The cost-reduction initiatives include a review of sourcing strategies and identification of synergies, while Bajaj steps up its role on KTM’s supervisory board, Bajaj Auto executive director Rakesh Sharma said.“Our support to them started with the first phase, where we had to get the liquidity organized. The second was putting in the top management.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Two data releases on 13 April held important messages for the government on ensuring food security and shielding the livelihood of citizens. First, inflation estimates released by India’s ministry of statistics for March suggest food inflation is rising faster than overall inflation. Second, early monsoon forecasts point to a high likelihood of deficient rains in 2026.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Muted earnings, premium valuations, currency weakness, relatively attractive emerging market (EM) peers, and India’s limited participation in the global AI value chain have reduced the country's appeal for foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), says Arbind Maheswari, head of India equities at BofA Securities, in an interview with Mint. While global investors remain cautious, domestic flows will continue to support the country's market activity, he says. Edited excerpts of the interview:If we take a step back, in the post-covid recovery phase, India seemed like the only large emerging market that had a story to tell.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Wall Street’s ambivalence toward retail investors was summed up by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., explaining what convinced him to get out of the stock market before the Crash of 1929.It was, he said, unsolicited investing advice from the guy polishing his wingtips.“When the shoeshine boys have tips, the stock market is too popular for its own good,” said Kennedy, who sold short and made a fortune, giving rise to an American political dynasty.The story seems too perfect to be true, but it underscores the basic tension between Wall Street and individual investors.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Since its merger-led transition into a bank in 2024, Slice has been moving away from an almost fully unsecured lending portfolio to a large, secured loan book, the bank’s top executive told Mint. Managing director and chief executive Rajan Bajaj said secured lending, which currently accounts for about 22% of the company’s portfolio, is expected to become the dominant segment over the next decade.“For us, secured business is growing faster than unsecured and will continue this way.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indian equities caught a strong bid on Wednesday, with both the Nifty 50 and the S&P BSE Sensex rallying nearly 2%, as easing tensions in West Asia lifted investor sentiment. The mood turned distinctly risk-on amid growing signs that the conflict may be approaching a resolution.As per reports, US President Donald Trump suggested the war is “close to over,” even hinting at a second round of face-to-face talks with Iran in Pakistan in the coming days.