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A 10-member committee is being set up by the government to identify suitable candidates as it seeks to push consolidation among state-run banks, which has 27, including five subsidiaries of State Bank of India.
The latest M&A transaction in public sector banks was the takeover of State Bank of Indore by State Bank of India in 2010. SBI took over State Bank of Saurashtra in 2008.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has initiated steps to regulate the nascent and hitherto unregulated peer-to-peer (P2P) lending business, reports Livemint.
The RBI has proposed registering P2P lending platforms as non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and put out a discussion paper, to that effect, on its website on Thursday.
Amazon.com reported profit and revenue that blew past analysts’ expectations, sending its shares soaring in after-hours trading and demonstrating the growing market power of its core retail business and new cloud services division.
The results draw a sharp contrast to the disappointing fourth quarter Amazon reported in January, which renewed worries among some shareholders about the company’s comparatively thin profit margins. Shares of the world’s biggest online retailer jumped nearly 13 percent to $679 in extended trading on Thursday.
Amazon’s performance also assuaged concerns about a broader slowdown among tech and internet companies after Apple, Microsoft and Intel all reported disappointing earnings.
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The rising number of bad loans in public sector banks, amplified by the Vijay Mallya case, has prompted the Central Vigilance Commission ( CVC) to ask these banks to draw up a second layer of verification of valuation reports and such documents submitted by a potential borrower, reports The Economic Times.
The move comes amid attempts by lenders to recover dues of Rs 9,000 crore on loans made to the Mallya-founded Kingfisher Airlines. Mallya left for the UK on 2 March, triggering action by CBI and ED.
Swedish furniture maker IKEA has asked the government for a faster Customs clearance mechanism for smooth business operations as it is gets ready to open its first store in India, reports Business Standard.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan has been quoted saying in the The Economic Times that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should trim down its bureaucracy and act quickly in sanctioning financial assistance in the form of liquidity during financial crisis as it is the backstop for countries in trouble.
The most critical aspect of any crisis is liquidity that countries need for which they depend on IMF, the global multilateral institution which is tasked with the idea of guarding global monetary stability.
In a first, CBDT has made public a host of hard data on the total number of taxpayers in the country, income disclosed in income tax returns by various category of taxpayers and number of PAN holders in the country for a chosen period of time, reports Financial Express.
The department said the objective of publishing these statistics was to encourage “wider use and analysis of Income Tax data by departmental personnel and academicians.”
The new foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations that prohibit online marketplaces from offering discounts may inadvertently help e-commerce firms Flipkart and Snapdeal, which are scrambling to conserve cash and cut costs, by slowing Amazon’s advance in India, albeit temporarily.
While the three companies continue to fund discounts purportedly given by third-party sellers on their sites, they have cancelled planned sale events and accompanying advertisements until the start of the festive season to avoid potential punishment from regulators.
A special Livemint report says the cancellation will hit Amazon more than its local rivals.
Companies will soon have one unique identification number to carry out all business transactions, reports The Economic Times.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the ministry of corporate affairs are integrating their back-end operations to provide one simple identity to companies, doing away with the multiplicity of numbers currently being used by them, a senior government official was quoted in the report.
While the MCA is trying to expedite the exercise, various government departments involved in the process including directorate general foreign trade, labour department are trying to reach a consensus on the most acceptable identification number.
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