War Financial News

The civil aviation ministry on Thursday has suspended a decision requiring airlines to offer passengers free selection for at least 60% of the seats on a flight. Mint examines whether this will help airlines offset rising aviation turbine fuel costs triggered by the war in Iran.Last month, the country’s aviation regulator asked airlines to offer 60% of the seats on every domestic flight to be selected free of charge, allowing passengers to choose them without paying an additional fee.

On April Fools’ Day, the American president addressed the nation and the world to send not one message about the war that the US and Israel launched against Iran a month ago, but all possible messages at once.The conflict is “nearing completion,” Donald Trump said, before repeating that the US might also escalate by hitting Iran’s power plants if there’s “no deal.” The US is “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he asserted, before claiming that “we never said ‘regime change’” while simultaneously musing that the regime, which remains ensconced, sort of has changed, since American and Israeli forces have killed so many leaders.Again he claimed that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, even though evidence is accumulating that the Iranians had safely moved their enriched uranium to other locations before those strikes. Trump knows this too, since he has been considering ordering ground troops to try to seize that fissile material, while fearing the quagmire such a mission could end in.“We have all the cards, they have none,” the president boasted.

With the war in Iran now in its second month, India’s cooking-gas shortage is turning serious. Policymakers must view this as more than a temporary blip; it is a crisis that may permanently shift how the world’s most-populous nation consumes energy. Electric cooktops are vanishing from shelves: Amazon’s local unit reported a 30-fold jump in sales.

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Read more.War opens a window for India’s space startups: India’s space startups may have found an unexpected tailwind. The Iran war is driving demand for satellite-based surveillance, creating a “just right” moment for firms building imaging and data capabilities.Startups like Pixxel, Digantara and GalaxEye Space are already seeing inbound interest and signing deals, especially from West Asia, where many countries lack their own satellite systems.The opportunity is sizeable, with projections pegging India’s space surveillance market at $8 billion by 2033.

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Mint, the company “has started receiving queries and having conversations with at least two West Asian nations to supply space-based sensing and Earth observation data”.Speciale Invest and Infosys-backed GalaxEye is in the race for surveillance satellite solution services. Suyash Singh, co-founder and CEO, said the company is ready to launch its Drishti optical and synthetic aperture radar (OpToSar) surveillance satellite this quarter, following which surveillance imaging and data services will commence commercially from July.“There is certainly a lot of interest, but the number of surveillance satellites that can cater to foreign demand in the current war from India is only in double digits, as compared with the US having hundreds of satellites in orbit," Singh said."We’re launching a 1.5-metre earth observation satellite in about two months, and in anticipation of the future demand based on queries received, have established plans to set up a 0.5-metre resolution satellite constellation of 20 satellites for Earth observation and surveillance constellation by 2029,” he added.Space firms are therefore hedging their bets on surveillance satellites, seeking to tap into a global surge in demand for space-based data.Several factors are driving this shift.“One of the key factors is that many West Asian nations, including Iran, do not have sovereign satellite capabilities and run very limited and small-scale space programmes.

With no end in sight to the West Asia war, concerns are rising over inflation, interest rates and GDP growth in India. As part of the Money Guru series, Bank of Baroda chief economist Madan Sabnavis breaks down the potential impact on the economy, household finances and job markets, and assesses whether recession risks are real or overstated.At a theoretical level, inflation could rise, but much depends on how long the war lasts, how high crude oil prices go and how much of this increase is passed on to consumers. So far, the government reduced excise duty on petrol and diesel, absorbing much of the crude price increase.

. 28, lasts for only a few more weeks, falling gas prices will likely deliver an economic tailwind later this year. If the stress continues for months, however, economists will start to worry about a slowdown, or even a recession.President Trump in a prime-time speech Wednesday said he would achieve America’s military objectives “very shortly” and vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.” Equities markets closed little changed Thursday, while U.S. oil futures soared.The U.S.

Mint earlier reported that amid high oil prices and a supply squeeze due to the war in West Asia, OMCs halted supplies on credit to fuel retailers.On 26 March, the petroleum and natural gas ministry had said that efforts were underway to increase the supplies from one-day credit period to up to three days of supplies on credit.“In most cases, it is still advance payment. For large retailers there may be instances of a day's credit, but not all are getting that,” said Marri Amarender Reddy, general secretary of the UPDA.

On 12 March, when February inflation printed at 3.2%, the war in West Asia had been raging for 13 days. Oil company retail agencies, which sell cylinders of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at an administered price to registered users, shuttered their doors, anticipating supply cuts. Consumers were forced to turn to the informal market, where the price had risen five-fold by 12 March, relative to the regulated price even without the Ujjwala price subsidy.

₹9,000 crore to become the country’s fourth-largest paint company, sees stronger growth potential in industrial coatings than in the decorative segment, Parth Jindal managing director of JSW Paints and chairman of JSW Dulux, the erstwhile AkzoNobel India, told Mint.“We have global R&D capabilities after we acquired Akzo Nobel and particularly in the absence of Birla Opus in the industrial paints space we see less competition,” Jindal said. He added that a potential shift towards electric vehicles (EVs), driven by the West Asia conflict, could further boost demand.The conflict has already started influencing the EV market.

Domestic steel prices have climbed sharply following the imposition of safeguard duty on imports in December. The war has further disrupted key trade routes, lifting freight costs and, along with rupee depreciation, increasing the pressure on imports.The spot price of hot rolled coil (HRC) has risen about 22% over its Q3FY26 average to ₹57,700 per tonne, but still remains below the landed cost of imports from China, giving domestic producers an advantage, according to a Nomura Global Market Research report.For Q4FY26, the average HRC price stood at ₹53,866 per tonne — a 14% sequential increase.

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Consulting and auditing companies in India are clamping down on hiring or letting people go on the back of the impact of artificial intelligence and a poor pipeline of work from clients because of the domino effect of the West Asia war.Goliaths of the business—Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., Accenture and Kearney, along with auditing giants PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte—have held meetings on the war and how it would affect the India headcount.“Over the last two weeks, we had meetings with senior partners and the impact of the war on business was discussed. Lateral hiring has stopped for us, unless critical, and we have been told that cost cuts are on the anvil,” said a senior partner in the consulting team of a Big Four firm.“While strategic consultants are not impacted yet, those who worked in the research teams and production services will be impacted.

war in West Asia rocked global sentiment.Fresh project announcements slipped 13% to ₹44 trillion in the financial year 2025-26 (FY26), according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). It almost erased 16% growth seen in the previous fiscal.The slowdown was primarily driven by a 58% collapse in the government-led capex announcements, which had jumped 54% in the previous year.

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Mint in an emailed statement.Other companies including Turtlemint, Indo-Mim, Inframarket, Symbiotech Pharmalabs, Duroflex, and KKR-backed Leap India are also taking a more calibrated approach for a public listing in the current climate, multiple people familiar with the matter said. All these companies have secured approval from market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to go public, according to data from Prime Database.Some of these companies have temporarily paused or deferred their IPO preparations due to concerns over valuations amid a turbulent stock market, two people said on the condition of anonymity.

West Asia war could push inflation higher, keeping prospective homebuyers on the sidelines. Affordability was already under strain after sustained price hikes, driven by rising construction costs even as demand held up.Early signs of a slowdown are emerging.

The financial and economic implications of the US-Israeli war with Iran will depend on the war’s duration. The longer it goes on, the longer we can expect oil, gas, fertilizer, helium and other prices to remain elevated.