Universities Financial News

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.Cancers are real biological cheats. Whereas most of the cells in a healthy animal’s body get along by following the same set of genetic rules, cancer cells shamelessly ignore them.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Last spring, Yale University President Maurie McInnis asked a group of faculty to examine why Americans were losing confidence in higher education—and to propose remedies to restore it.Their much-anticipated findings, released Wednesday, call for changes to address everything from perceived political bias among faculty, to opaque admission standards and crushing student debt.“In its report, the committee calls on Yale to reflect on and take responsibility for our role in the erosion of public trust,” McInnis wrote. “I accept this judgment fully.”The report comes as colleges and universities seek to placate a presidential administration that has filed lawsuits, frozen federal research funds and generally made life uncomfortable for institutions accustomed to more autonomy.

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.Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has returned Ujjivan Small Finance Bank’s application to upgrade to a universal bank, sending a clear signal to the industry: meeting financial criteria is not enough. The regulator is placing heavy emphasis on the diversification of loan books, a move that will force other hopefuls to reassess their transition timelines.Ujjivan was among the three small finance banks (SFBs) that had applied to the central bank to transition to a universal bank.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For anyone scrolling through social media lately, Vietnam seems to have taken over the feed, with its cafés, coastlines and bustling streets firmly etched onto the global travel map. But the tourism buzz is only the surface of a deeper story.Emerging from the ashes of the war with the US and from being one of the world’s poorest economies in the 1980s, Vietnam is now seen as an economic miracle, delivering sustained high growth (8% in 2025) and reducing poverty to below 5% from nearly 80% in 1993.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Saurabh Mukherjea is not the kind of fund manager who hedges his bets with careful language. The founder of Marcellus Investment Managers, one of India’s more closely watched boutique fund houses, has made a career of saying out loud what others whisper.His latest vehicle for that is a book—Breakpoint: The Crisis of the Middle Class and the Future of Work, published by Juggernaut in March 2026 and co-written with economist Nandita Rajhansa and human resources professional Sapana Bhavsar.“I have argued in my book that India is not creating enough jobs for the middle and lower income segments,” he said. “This would mean that the opportunity to invest in Indian businesses will come down over the next several years.

Democracy is inherently fraught. At its core lies the difficulty of translating individual preferences into a coherent social choice, a problem famously captured by Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem and later developed by another Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in his 1970 book Collective Choice and Social Welfare.

One Piece collaboration in April, while Starbucks India ran a Harry Potter-themed experience in March. While Britannia’s Jim Jam featured Marvel characters in March, Pokémon-themed Oreo packs have been on shelves since early 2025.

Three words uttered from Mission Control to Reid Wiseman, commander of Artemis II, perfectly capture the groundswell of emotion many of us have experienced over the past week as a team of astronauts flew beyond the previous reaches of human space travel: “Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.”That line, borrowed from the hero of the science-fiction blockbuster Project Hail Mary, came as Wiseman took in, for the first time, the full majestic scale of the moon.

‘Goldilocks’ refers to a situation that is just right. Derived from the fairytale character who prefers things in the middle, it describes an optimal, balanced condition. In the previous policy review on 6 February 2026, the RBI governor highlighted that this was the prevailing condition in India, and rightfully so.

Elon Musk has predicted that in 10 to 20 years, work will become optional. He has done this umpteen times—in response to a New York Times article about Amazon, at a US-Saudi investment forum, in a conversation with Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath, at Viva Technology 2024 in Paris and the 2023 AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park.

India’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector may have had a muted year on the surface, but a closer look tells a very different story. FY26, marked by global uncertainty, earnings downgrades and foreign investor outflows, did not reward broad sector bets—but it strongly rewarded stock-pickers.A Mint analysis of 724 BFSI stocks shows that nearly one in five companies delivered strong gains despite weak benchmark performance. As many as 131 stocks, or over 18% of the universe, generated returns of more than 25% during the year.

The scarcity of LPG cylinders has hit India’s engineering, management and medical colleges hard. Institutes are adopting diverse workarounds to manage the crisis— shifting to online classes, using diesel burners, switching to induction cooktops, or simply letting students order their meals via food delivery platforms.The crisis is due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which nearly 90% of India's LPG imports pass. The country sources about 60% of its cooking gas from overseas.

Minkyu Shin is an assistant professor of marketing at the City University of Hong Kong. He can be reached at [email protected] all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint.

Hollywood is known for its short memory, but David Ellison has been testing the aphorism’s limits. Ellison, who merged his Skydance studio with Paramount seven months ago and is in the process of acquiring Warner Bros Discovery, has a payroll that includes several names lodged in the collective memory of observers for the wrong reasons.First, there’s Jeff Shell, president of Paramount Skydance, who was fired as CEO of NBC Universal in 2023 following an allegation of sexual harassment. Then there’s John Lasseter, Paramount’s head of animation, who left Walt Disney in 2018 after allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

The Supreme Court on 14 March notified a nine-judge Constitution Bench to revisit a longstanding question in Indian labour law: What legally counts as an “industry?”The interpretation of this single word matters because it determines which organizations fall under labour laws and which workers can access labour dispute mechanisms in India.A nine-judge bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant will begin hearing the matter on 17 March and conclude arguments on 18 March. The bench includes Justices B.V.

over the past two weeks amid global risk aversion, rising crude oil prices and persistent foreign portfolio investor outflows, prompting investors to reassess valuations after trade-deal-fuelled exuberance and a sharp rebound from budget-session lows.However, the correction has only partly cooled the market’s froth. A Mint analysis of over 3,400 BSE-listed companies shows that while valuations have moderated from recent highs, a significant portion of stocks still trades at premium multiples.Valuations across the broader market were visibly stretched when the Sensex touched its 52-week high of 85,762.01 on 2 January 2026.

small finance banks, such as the requirement to lend 60% of loans to priority sectors, drops to 40% for universal banks, giving lenders greater flexibility in portfolio construction and improving return metrics. The transition would also allow AU to expand into larger-ticket lending, enabling greater cross-selling and higher fee income growth.The shift could also strengthen the bank’s credibility among depositors and help widen its funding base.

Arnya Real Estates Fund Advisors and developer Supreme Universal have raised ₹1,030 crore for Arnya Real Estate Fund—Equity, from domestic and offshore investors, including family offices and ultra-rich individuals, marking the first close for the equity platform.The capital raised also includes around ₹220 crore of equity committed by the two sponsors. Arnya Real Estates will manage the fund, while Mumbai-based Supreme Universal will develop the projects.Arnya Real Estates has raised the capital for the platform via a Sebi-registered category II alternative investment fund (AIF)—Arnya Real Estate Fund-Equity.The two partners had announced the launch of a residential real estate platform in November that will develop housing projects in Mumbai and Pune.

If you thought 2025 was a tough transition, 2026 now seems to have plenty more surprises in store. India, in particular, has to trek through two tricky minefields over the next 10 months: energy security and technological flux. These two prickly issues will have to fight for the political leadership’s mind-space, cluttered as it is with tricky geopolitics, rising unemployment, sticky economic growth and an always-on electoral cycle.