UPS Financial News

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It’s a hot day in Hanoi, the humidity hanging heavy, but we’re cutting a cool path through the water of Ha Long Bay, heading towards the uber-luxury Vinpearl Resort, built on an island with spectacular views of the bay. This isn’t a vacation though. We’re here to test drive VinFast’s new MPV 7.Before we get to the cars, we’re shown the entire repertoire of the Vin’s group’s strength since the group has ambitious plans for India.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.From India and New Zealand formally signing a free trade agreement (FTA) to India once again becoming a net exporter of finished steel, the index of industrial production (IIP) easing to a five-month low in March, freshers facing disruptions in job offers,and gender disparity in India’s boardrooms — here is a compilation of this week's news in numbers.India and New Zealand formally signed a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) on Monday after completing the negotiations in just nine months in December 2025, making this one of the fastest trade deals ever concluded. The deal carries a $20 billion investment commitment from Wellington over the next 15 years, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said.The FTA will grant duty-free access to all Indian exports to New Zealand, spanning 100% of tariff lines.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Memory prices have been going “parabolic,” a big investment bank wrote this past week. I gripped my TI-84 graphing calculator in outrage. My email inbox has turned into a parabo-looza, with misuse of that term up sixfold from last year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In the cool green depths of Uttarakhand, a young audio engineer chose an unusual career path. Rohit had grown up amid the impact of human-animal conflicts, and each incident he encountered shocked him to the core. He decided he wanted to tell the world the real stories behind the hundreds of tiger attacks that occur in India, and, in doing so, combine his audio expertise with his experiences with wildlife.Setting up a YouTube channel, Wilderness, the young man dove head-first into the no-compromises setup he felt the stories deserved.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Fast-moving consumer goods makers are leaning on a mix of price increases, smaller pack sizes and tighter cost controls to navigate raw-material volatility triggered by the ongoing US-Iran war, while still reporting robust volume growth for the March quarter. The ongoing war blew up end February this year, disrupting global supply chains.Executives at top firms said calibrated pricing and ‘shrinkflation’ are helping them protect margins. The trend shows staples demand have held up, but also points to a gradual pass-through of higher commodity and packaging costs to consumers as geopolitical disruptions keep input prices elevated.At Hindustan Unilever Ltd, the strategy is already in motion.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A regulatory effort to keep the national power grid stable and make green power more reliable may wreck the revenues of producers and potentially lead to tariff hikes, industry executives warned. The regulator has proposed steep penalties for companies which are under- or over-producing power, rattling solar and wind power firms dependent on the vagaries of weather.In the power sector, a deviation settlement mechanism (DSM) penalizes producers when what they deliver to discoms differs from what they promised.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mapusa market, especially on Fridays, throbs with activity. It’s the day when smaller businesses set up their stalls in this market in north Goa, selling trinkets, gifts and other odds and ends. At the heart of it is the enclosed municipal market, which has its usual assortment of vegetable sellers.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.GANDHINAGAR: Six listed companies have applied for licences to set up corporate treasury centres in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT City, said Kalyanaraman Rajaraman, chairperson of the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA).The applications signal rising interest in India’s offshore financial hub as large companies look to centralize global cash and risk management. While the regulator declined to identify the applicants, Rajaraman said demand is likely to rise over time.“We have issued 10 authorizations till date… we are talking to almost every MNC (multinational company).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU: Reliance Retail has acquired Anomaly Haircare, the global haircare label founded by actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas, as it accelerates its push into beauty and personal care.The dealincludes ownership of trademarks and digital assets with plans to scale the brand across India and global markets using Reliance’s omnichannel ecosystem, including its Tira platform, it said in a statement on Thursday.Mint unpacks why Reliance Retail is assembling a celebrity-led brand portfolio despite these companies reporting losses.Reliance Retail’s playbook has increasingly leaned on star power. The company had bought a majority stake in actor Alia Bhatt’s kidswear brand Ed-a-Mamma in July 2023.It acquired a 40% stake in celebrity stylist Manish Malhotra’s luxury ethnic wear brand MM Styles in 2021, and bought a majority stake in celebrity stylist Ritu Kumar’s label the same year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2013, Shelby Van Pelt, a former financial consultant, took a writing class at Emory University, Atlanta , where one of her assignments involved composing a story from an unusual point of view. She picked an octopus for the exercise, a wise and droll protagonist she wanted to call Marcus Aurelius after the great Roman emperor who lived in 121-180 CE.“Based on feedback from my critique partners, I eventually mashed up his name to Marcellus,” Van Pelt says on a video call from her home in Chicago.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Global payments network Visa is stepping up its push for merchant acceptance in India as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) cements its lead in everyday digital payments, a top Visa India executive told Mint. The company is betting that cheaper acceptance tools, card-based subscriptions, and a broader set of payment choices can help it win share among both small and large merchants.Ramakrishnan Gopalan, chief product officer, India and South Asia at Visa, said the company’s first pitch to merchants is built around consumer choice.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Last year was a major step forward in the clean energy revolution, with installations of renewable sources such as solar panels and wind turbines hitting record highs not only in the developed world, but in emerging economies too. But then came the war in Iran, a global curve ball that’s bound to change our collective future in unpredictable ways.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Diagnostics major Dr. Lal Path Labs saw revenue improve 17% year-on-year to ₹703 crore in the March quarter (Q4FY26), beating consensus estimate by 5%. The jump was primarily led by higher sample volumes and better realizations.Revenue grew 12.2% to ₹2,763 crore in FY26.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.I’ve questioned before whether Wall Street has the temperament for the artificial-intelligence (AI) era. It’s hard to argue it does when just one report from the Wall Street Journal, which suggested OpenAI had missed some internal growth targets, was enough to wipe billions of dollars of value off related stocks. For a moment on Tuesday, you’d have thought the sky was falling on the AI boom.It wasn’t, of course, and some of the initial shock losses were pared once OpenAI had struck a reassuring tone in a statement that said it was still “firing on all cylinders.”Still, the knee-jerk reaction was an indication of how closely the fate of OpenAI is tied to perception of the AI industry’s future.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.THE BINHAI library, often called China’s most beautiful, is breathtaking. Swirling shelves of books rise in gravity-defying stacks to a high ceiling in a light-dappled room: a modern cathedral to learning. No wonder the library, in Tianjin, an eastern city, has become a favourite photo stop for glammed-up young folk posting to social media.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The India Meteorological Department's (IMD) seasonal outlook for summer 2026 warns of above-normal heatwave days, with rising nighttime temperatures compounding daytime heat stress across east, central, northwest India, and the southeast peninsula.Latest data showed that 19 of the world's 20 hottest cities were located in India.With multiple cities across Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Maharashtra logging temperatures around 44°C, well above seasonal norms, large parts of India are in the grip of an intense and widespread heatwave.Crucially, rising nighttime temperatures are a growing concern. Warmer nights reduce recovery from heat stress, driving up energy demand significantly.As summers grow longer and hotter, the demand for cooling is no longer seasonal.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.State-owned Uco Bank expects its micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) portfolio to remain stable despite global headwinds, managing director and chief executive officer Ashwani Kumar told Mint in an interview on Thursday. The bank is eyeing a retail lending boost and is stepping up investments in technology to drive growth, he said.While geopolitical tensions and supply-chain disruptions could have some impact, Kumar expressed confidence that policy support would help cushion the sector.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For years, the only way to get workstation-class performance in a portable form factor was to buy a gaming laptop. You put up with the aggressive "gamer" aesthetics—the neon RGB lighting and the bulky, tank-like chassis—because that was the only way to get the necessary horsepower.Today, that category is being quietly rewritten as hardware makers recognise that a growing share of their most demanding users aren’t gamers at all—they’re creators.And this isn’t just a marketing pivot.During a recent conversation with Paramjeet Singh Mehta, Product and Marketing Head for Consumer PC & Gaming at ASUS India, the scale of this transition became clear.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan became the latest technocrat to embrace quantum computing on Thursday as privately held PsiQuantum announced he would be joining the company’s board.It’s a big step for someone who has previously cited quantum computing as a strategic priority. Back in February, Tan described quantum as “another big area coming up is around the corner” in relation to how large amounts of data are processed.Even before then, the executive had ties to PsiQuantum and other players in the industry.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Talk of the Indian rupee at 100 to the dollar is back. The currency has been among the worst performers globally since 2025, and 2026 hasn’t offered much relief. It has continued to weaken, even as the 95 level against the US dollar holds, for now.The rupee on Thursday settled at 94.84 against the dollar, up 4 paise on the day—little to change the broader direction.