NDMC set to auction Taj Mansingh
After six temporary extensions, Delhi’s beloved heritage hotel Taj Mansingh, will finally be auctioned off after March 31. The New Delhi Municipal Council, which owns the land on which the hotel was built, has already started proceedings after it received the approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
“The MHA has given us the verdict that the hotel needs to be auctioned. We will take up the issue formally with the council on March 20, when we have the meeting,” said Jalaj Srivastava, chairman of NDMC. The property owned by the council was given to Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) on lease, which went on for 33 years until the formal lease ended in 2011. Read here.
Snapdeal to spend Rs 1,200cr on logistics
The online website shopping portal on Monday announced that it is investing Rs 1,200 crore to beef up its logistics network. Snapdeal also revealed that it intends to acquire five to six companies in mobile technology, big data and supply chain space this year. In addition to that, the company also plans to launch a four-hour delivery service in 10-cities across the country, as reported by the Times of India. Read here.
Internal audit upbraids Air India on its upgrade policy
An internal audit of the state-owned loss-making carrier Air India has pulled for upgrading passengers to higher-class seats as per its whims and not having any defined criteria for such practices. According to a report in the Financial Express, the internal audit team found that a record number of passengers — 36,092 — were upgraded from economy class to either first or executive class during January-June 2014 on flights between Delhi and Mumbai. Read here.
India’s Budget - Why execution is so important this year
Sajjid Z Chinoy writes in Business Standard that while the 2015 Union Budget met market expectation on institutional reform, there was a gamble at the heart of the budget – a relaxation of the fiscal deficit to create space for more public investment and transfers to the states. The chief economist at JP Morgan emphasises that the success of the gamble will totally depend on the execution of the budget. Read here.
Sun Pharma overtakes SBI in market valuation
The drug manufacturer on Tuesday overtook State bank of India to become the country’s largest lender, in terms of market valuation, according to a report in Business Today. Sun Pharma’s market capitalisation (m-cap) increased to Rs 2,15 lakh crore, following an over one-per cent rally in the comapny’s scrip on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), overtaking SBI, whose valuation stood at Rs 2.09 lakh crore during afternoon trade. Read here.
JP Morgan Likely to Bag Canaan Portfolio
JP Morgan Asset Management is ahead in the race to acquire Canaan Partners’ India portfolio for about $200 million. It will be the largest secondary portfolio sale in the domestic private equity and venture capital market, the Economic Times reports. Read here.
HDFC, ICICI Banks launch mobile-pay apps
Commercial banks like HDFC and ICICI are entering the mobile payment space. HDFC Bank has just launched Chillr, a third-party app that allows users to transfer money to anybody in their phone book contacts list. Meanwhile, ICICI Bank too launched a mobile-pal app – Pockets app. It is a wallet model, similar to Paytm and MobiKwik. One doesn’t have to be an account holder with ICICI Bank to use it. Read here.
Infosys open to bigger buys of up to $700 mn
The country’s second-largest IT services exporter that it is looking to gain a firmer foothold in geographies like Japan while also boosting certain business verticals. “We are open to a $500-700 million acquisition as size will not be a big deterrent for us. If we are confident of synergy benefits and fewer integration challenges then we are open for bigger acquisitions,” Infosys chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao told the Financial Express. Read here.
SWAMI SPEAK - Singh is Easy Picking
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar writes in the Economic Times how the government should set-up a comprehensive corruption checking system that detects and quickly convicts crooks, in politics and instead of going after former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Read here.
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