QBiz: Dassault Says Open to Investigation in Rafale Deal & More

Read your business news wrap for the day here.

A French Dassault Rafale fighter plane. 

(Photo: Reuters)

1. Open to Any Investigation in Rafale Deal: Dassault

Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier said his company was open to investigation of the Rafale deal with India and denied that any corruption was involved. The company’s relationship with Ambanis went back to 2012, predating the current deal, he said in his first interview on the matter since the controversy broke. He added that business with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group would amount to Rs 850 crore, not Rs 30,000 crore as is being alleged.

“We stick to the laws of France and laws of India and the law of the contract,” Trappier told The Economic Times in an interview. “We are totally against corruption. If there is any investigation in France or India, we are not only open to the investigation, it is our duty (to respond). We will prove there is no corruption.”

(Source: The Economic Times)

2. Mittal, Ambani Paint Different Pictures of Telecom Sector

Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal and Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani painted contrasting pictures of the Indian telecom sector while speaking at an industry event, here on Thursday, 24 October.

Mittal, whose company’s India operations reported losses for the third successive quarter, said consolidation in the Indian telecom industry hasn’t happened in an orderly way and had come at a heavy price with a whopping $50 billion (over Rs 3.66 lakh crore) being wiped off from the sector.

He added that the sector was among “the most heavily taxed like the tobacco industry,” and called for an early resolution both to this issue as well as to the spate of litigation between telcos and the government.

(Source: The Economic Times)

3. Essar Steel Shareholders Offer to Pay Rs 54,389 Crore to Clear Dues

Shareholders of embattled Essar Steel on Thursday, 24 October offered to pay Rs 54,389 crore, including an upfront cash payment of Rs 47,507 crore, to clear all dues owed to lenders.

The move aims at pulling the company out of insolvency proceedings.

The proposal was made as the Committee of Essar Steel Creditors voted on a takeover offer made by the world’s largest steel maker, ArcelorMittal.

“The shareholders of Essar Steel have today (Thursday) submitted a proposal to the Committee of Creditors (CoC) for full settlement of the entire admitted claims of financial creditors, operational creditors, and workmen and employees of Essar Steel India Ltd (ESIL), aggregating Rs 54,389 crore, under Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code,” the company said in a statement.

(Source: Livemint)

4. Q2 Results: Bharti Airtel Posts Surprise Profit on Deferred Tax Gain

Bharti Airtel Ltd reported a surprise net profit in the July-September quarter aided by a one-time deferred tax gain without which it would’ve suffered a loss.

India’s second-largest telecom network’s net profit rose to Rs 119 crore in the three months ended September from Rs 97 crore in the preceding quarter, according to its stock exchange filing.

Analyst estimates compiled by BloombergQuint had pegged a net loss of Rs 990 crore. Bharti Airtel posted a profit because of a deferred tax gain of Rs 2,633 crore in the reporting quarter.

(Source: Bloomberg Quint)

5. Jet Airways May Look to Resize Pilots’ Team Soon, to Return 23 Boeing 737 Narrow Body Aircrafts

Troubled carrier Jet Airways may look to resize its team of pilots soon – a large chunk of whom currently fly ATRs – with a smaller number of pilots, sources close to the development told FE.

The airline is also reportedly in discussions with US leasing and aircraft finance company GECAS to return 23 of its Boeing 737 narrow body aircraft, some of them grounded, sources said. These persons indicated the airline is understood to be finding it hard to meet the lease payment obligations.

In a response to FE query on pilots and returning of aircraft, a spokesperson for Jet said, “Your information is speculative and incorrect. Jet Airways urges the publication to refrain from such misleading reporting”.

The team could be smaller by around 40-50 pilots, sources said, and FE could not get a definite number.

(Source: The Financial Express)

6. Paytm Case: Plot Thickens as Boss Sees ‘Bigger Plan’

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said the alleged extortion case involving company executive Sonia Dhawan that has rocked the company may have been part of a broader conspiracy and that it had left him “shocked and surprised.”

“I believe Sonia is a conduit of someone else’s bigger plan,” Sharma told ET. “I don’t know how many more people were involved in this sad conspiracy. I am shocked and surprised at things that happened and some claims or theories being pitched. I am sure with support of police and everyone involved we will uncover the details soon.”

This follows Dhawan’s family and her lawyer saying that she’s being framed due to “rivalry inside the company” and jealousy because of her promotion to vice president about a month ago. Dhawan has been arrested for being part of an alleged attempt to extort money from the unicorn’s founder.

(Source: The Economic Times)

7. Adani Gas to Be Listed in November

Adani Gas Ltd, the gas sourcing and distribution business that was spun off from Adani Enterprises Ltd earlier this year, will be listed on the BSE and NSE in November, according to bankers involved in the process.

Earlier this month, the Adani Group signed an agreement with French oil and gas giant Total SA to set up a joint venture to develop multi-energy offerings such as LNG and fuel retailing.

On 9 September, the shareholders of Adani Enterprises were allotted one equity share of AGL (face Value of Re 1) for each share held in Adani Enterprises.

Adani Gas Holdings Limited (AGHL) will merge with Adani Gas Limited, according to the scheme of arrangement approved by the National Company Law Tribunal in August.

(Source: The Hindu Business Line)

8. India’s Digital Economy May Cross $1 Trillion by 2022, Says Report

India’s digital economy is likely to cross $1 trillion by the financial year 2022, a KPMG report said here on Thursday. The report launched at the India Mobile Congress 2018 also forecasts that mobile data usage in the country is likely to surge five times by 2023. “In a sign of the country’s ascendancy and as a testimony to the telecom sector’s blistering pace of growth, India became the world’s second-largest telecom market in 2018 with over a billion subscribers,” said the report. “With the given trends, the digital economy is expected to cross $1 trillion by FY22.”

According to the report, the total mobile subscriber base is expected to reach 1.28 billion in FY 2022 and data consumption is expected to reach 7 GB (giga bit) per subscriber per month.

The expansion will “further witness digital diversity in the online audience taking it from the current 225 million in FY18 to 550 million by FY23,” the report noted.

(Source: The Financial Express)

9. Facebook Gets Symbolic Fine for Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Facebook Inc was slapped with a symbolic 500,000-pound ($645,000) fine by the UK’s privacy regulator for “serious” violations of data protection rules that paved the way for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The fine is the highest possible for the Information Commissioner’s Office under old rules that predated this year’s European Union revamp of privacy penalties. The ICO said that between 2007 and 2014, “Facebook processed the personal information of users unfairly by allowing application developers access to their information without sufficiently clear and informed consent.”

The revelations that data belonging to millions of Facebook users and their friends may have been misused triggered a global backlash from investors and regulators. The ICO has led the European investigations into how such an amount of data – most belonging to US and UK residents – could have ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign.

(Source: Livemint)