India's central bank said on Monday that policy support is needed for longer for a sustained recovery in Asia's third largest economy from a coronavirus induced slowdown, even as demand has picked up, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy committee kept interest rates steady at record lows and reiterated the need to unwind pandemic-era stimulus only gradually to aid the nascent economic recovery.
Read more
India
India’s central bank surprised markets by suspending its version of quantitative easing, signaling the start of tapering pandemic-era stimulus measures as an economic recovery takes hold, Bloomberg News reported. There’s no need for further bond-buying, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said in an online broadcast Friday, while stressing the step is not a reversal of its accommodative policy stance. The RBI will be ready to resume purchases if needed, he said. Bonds were mixed.
Read more
Tata Sons Pvt. was selected as the winning bidder for India’s flag carrier, ending decades of attempts to privatize a money-losing and debt-laden airline, and potentially ending years of taxpayer-bailouts that’s kept the company alive, Bloomberg News reported. Tata Sons, which originally launched Air India Ltd. with a namesake branding in 1932, bid 180 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) as an enterprise value for Air India, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, the top bureaucrat at India’s Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, said at a briefing Friday.
Read more
SREI Group promoters on Wednesday moved the Bombay High Court challenging Reserve Bank of India’s decision to supersede the board of two group companies, in preparation for sending them to bankruptcy courts, the Economic Times of India reported. Srei group promoters are seeking stay on any insolvency proceedings at group companies Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd and Srei Equipment Finance Ltd, whose board the regulator sacked and appointed an administrator. The promoters are also seeking stay on the appointment of the administrator.
Read more
Tata Sons Pvt. is set to take over ailing Air India Ltd. again, more than half a century after the country’s biggest conglomerate ceded control to the state, ending the government’s hold over an airline that for decades defined the lofty ambitions of a newly-independent nation, Bloomberg News reported. A panel of ministers accepted a proposal from bureaucrats, who recommended the conglomerate’s bid ahead of an offer from entrepreneur Ajay Singh. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.
Read more
After strong observation by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on deep haircuts in recent insolvency resolution cases and several other discrepancies on part of lenders, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has approved the code of conduct for Committee of Creditors (COC)—one of the key stakeholders in the resolution ecosystem, Fortune India reported. The IBBI board, in its meeting held on last Friday, has approved the code of conduct for lenders, according to sources close to the development.
Read more
Boeing’s 737 MAX jetliner is set to fly again in India after two-and-a-half years, with SpiceJet NSE 1.51% planning to resume operations of the aircraft from October 5, The Economic Times reported. The no-frills airline’s pilots are currently being retrained on these planes, which were banned for flying by several countries, including India, in 2019 following two crashes blamed on computer glitches. Regulators have now started allowing resumption of operations with the narrow-body aircraft.
DS Kulkarni Developers Ltd. owners are accused of cheating more than 30,000 investors of more than ₹2,000 crore, the Hindustan Times reported. The case is being investigated by the economic offences wing (EOW) of the Pune police. Pune Investors in the DS Kulkarni group of companies have demanded that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigate alleged payments made by DSK firms to various money lenders and brokers. A consortium comprised of Ashdan Properties, Classic Promoters and Builders and Atul Builders will take over the debt-ridden group through the insolvency process.
If the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) finds evidence of criminal irregularities, it will approach the special courts, set up under the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, to punish the guilty, the Financial Express reported. Amid clamour for a greater scrutiny of the conduct of lenders, the IBBI is set to oversee complaints against members of the committee of creditors (CoC) if they fail to comply with a proposed code of conduct while resolving toxic assets.
India is planning new measures to clarify a landmark corporate bankruptcy law that was meant to bring the nation's largest corporate borrowers to heel, amid complaints it has become a “mockery of justice,” Nikkei Asia reported. The law giving more power to creditors was one of the Modi government’s signature reforms, but five years after it went into effect, banks are still taking big losses in bankruptcies, and the debt-resolution process has been plagued by delays and legal uncertainty.