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The Economic Times Jan 19, 2018 US President Donald Trump's 'Make in America' pledge may have spooked many, but Indian pharmaceutical companies are optimistic.  Several Indian drugmakers that have large operations in the US are now pushing to acquire assets there by either investing in greenfield manufacturing facilities or through brownfield M&As.  Experts told ET that the US tax policy, which slashed tax rates to around 21%, has certain advantages for Indian drug makers. ET has learnt that companies like Sun Pharma BSE -0.74 %, Cadila, Aurobindo and Torrent are looking to acquire manufacturing assets in the US.  In an email response, Sun Pharma, India's largest drug maker and the world's fifth largest generic drug maker, said it has an annual capex plan that includes expansion in the West too. "Sun Pharma has an annual capex plan to take care of its growing business in North America, Europe, emerging markets and India. This includes ...

The Hindu Jan 18, 2018 Raises questions about violation of SC orders and insurance regulator’s norms Despite the government extending the deadline for linking Aadhaar to various services to March 31, 2018, many insurance companies are insisting that customers part with their Aadhaar details for accessing their services. Principal among such insurers is the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), whose newly designed web portal requires mandatory registration of policy holders’ Aadhaar details to even access their own policy pages. It also seems to be the first instance of its kind when access to a web page is denied for want of Aadhaar details. If a customer doesn’t update his or her Aadhaar number upon signing in, they will not be able to move to their policy page to access their payment history, policy documents or any other details on the LIC’s website. LIC’s insistence on Aadhaar to even access the policy page on its website violates the spirit of both the Su...

The Times of India Jan 18, 2018 The 48th annual meeting of World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, is scheduled for next week and will host its usual line-up of industry veterans, globe-trotting financiers and politicians across the globe. The forum engages with the political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. It was established in 1971 as a non-profitable foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. To be attended by over 3,000 global leaders, the five-day WEF meet will be held between January 22 and January 26. What's on the agenda this year *The theme of the meeting, spread over 400 sessions, would be 'Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World', while the meeting would also see the largest ever proportion of women leaders (21 per cent) including all co-chairs being women this time including social entrepreneur Chetna Sinha from India and IMF's Christine Lagarde, the W...

A new chapter in India’s hydrocarbon exploration history was added on Thursday as the government started the bidding process under the first round of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) in which 55 blocks have been put under the hammer. OALP is a critical part of Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP) which was approved in March 2016. Notably, since the last round of bidding under the National Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) in 2010, this is the first bidding round for oil and gas exploration. While the last date to submit bids is April 3, blocks will be awarded by May. “This bidding has seen many firsts including the fact that bidders carved out the area. Bidders have shown interest for a substantive around 60,000 square km area,” said petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan while releasing the notice inviting offers for the blocks. Under OALP, six companies submitted expression of interest (EOI) for the 55 blocks after studying data from the National Data Repository, ...

Banks in India must improve pricing of loans based on risk assessment, a skill that would have helped them avoid non-performing assets, said N.S. Vishwanathan, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India on Thursday. He also asked banks to improve underwriting standards by writing strong loan covenants—agreements with the borrowers—as well as enforcing them on time. Indian banks are currently sitting on a stressed asset pool of over Rs10 trillion. “Risk-based pricing of loan would need fair assessment and understanding of the risk involved, rather than merely relying on collateral and/or guarantees obtained from stakeholders including equity holders. Banks should charge interest rate that is commensurate with the risk involved in the projects that are being financed,” he said at an event. In many instances, risk is under-priced, he said. “It would be safe to assume that had proper risk pricing been done by banks, many of the current NPAs (non-performing assets) could ha...

Having settled for a compromise on sugarcane payments with private mills, farmers in Tamil Nadu are demanding that the State government make good the loss of the last four years. It is the government that announced a recommendatory State Advised Price for the four years since 2013-14 over and above the mandatory Fair and Remunerative Price announced by the Centre. The private sector sugar mills had categorically declined to pay this price as it was unviable in the context of low sugar prices, point out farmers’ representatives. No SAP Also, farmers supplying sugarcane to co-operative and public sector mills are being paid SAP. These mills are chronically cash-strapped and the State government has been supporting them financially, they point out. Farmers are claiming a total of over ₹1,500 crore in SAP dues for the four years. Following the compromise arrived at earlier this month, they will get over ₹200 crore from private mills. This is more than what the mills had commi...

  Pranav Mukul  | New Delhi |  Updated: January 19, 2018 7:39 am Two investigations instituted by Infosys Ltd into the severance payout to its former Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Bansal may have cleared the software services company of any wrongdoing but the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has raised fresh red flags and pointed to three specific violations by Infosys. SEBI served a show-cause early December informing that action may be initiated against the company for observed violations — the severance payout violating the remuneration policy of the company; no prior approval of the audit committee for the severance agreement and failure to make timely disclosures to the bourses. Infosys responded by filing a consent plea which SEBI is examining. After a complaint by a whistle-blower in February 2017, SEBI commenced an investigation into the allegations regarding the acquisition of Panaya and the severance pay to Bansal. During the examination...

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 17:   A spike in crude oil prices, which could put Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at a disadvantage as he prepares for his Union Budget, but may prove to be an advantage for Dhamendra Pradhan, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas. On Thursday, Pradhan and his team will launch bids under the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) that allows players in the upstream space to carve out their own areas for exploration and production (E&P) and place bids. On offer are 46 onland blocks, eight shallow water blocks and one deepwater block. Typically, when oil prices are high, the appetite for companies to go into the E&P business goes up. It is in this backdrop that expectations are running high that India’s hydrocarbons hunt space, which has been lying subdued, may see some activity. Whether Pradhan and his team will get the deliverables or not, only days to come will show. Positive undercurrents Ajay Arora, Partner and National Leader - M...

ABJA Investment Co (ABJA), a Singapore-based subsidiary of  Tata  Steel, on Thursday priced its dollar bonds having two different tenures to raise a total of $1.3 billion, bankers close to the deal told FE. ABJA priced its 5.5-year bonds at 4.45% to raise $300 million, while it priced 10-year bonds at 5.45% to raise $1 billion, according to sources. The initial price guidance on the 5.5-year and the 10-year bonds stood at 4.875% and 5.875%, respectively. This is the first dollar bond offering by a subsidiary of an Indian company in 2018. “It was a great deal. The paper got priced lower than where the previously issued bonds of the company were trading in the secondary market. We saw a huge demand from investors across Asia and Europe,” a banker said. Road shows for the deal commenced this week in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and London. S&P Global Ratings said in a release that it has assigned ‘BB-’ long-term issue rating to the proposed dollar-denominated, seni...

R Ravichandran  | Krishnagiri |  Published: January 19, 2018 4:58 AM UAE-headquartered KEF Infra, a pre-fabricated (prefab) building manufacturer with its plant at Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu, has decided to set up end-to-end manufacturing plants in Hyderabad, Lucknow and Mumbai with an estimated investment of $300 million over the next two years to capitalise on the increasing demand for its prefab buildings across sectors. Buoyed with an order book of Rs 1,500 crore in hand, coupled with enquiries from corporate, government bodies and private builders, the company expects to report turnover of Rs 5,000 crore by 2020-21, against Rs 1,000 crore in 2017. The company will also be entering the smart homes segment to make affordable homes for the masses with the starting price of Rs 10 lakh, said Faizal E Kottikollon, chairman of KEF Infra and KEF Holdings. “I sold my oil and gas valves business in the UAE to US major Tyco to raise Rs 2,500 crore in 2012 and decided to become ...

It is a measure of the abject inadequacy of liberal thought today that all it can bring to the political arena, and to public discourse generally, is high indignation at the tawdriness of what it dismissively describes as ‘populism’. Even when, on occasion, some of the more serious liberal ideologues try to do better, there is a tendency to produce a pattern of analysis that goes roughly like this. They observe everywhere the dissatisfaction of ordinary people (by ordinary people I just mean working and workless people away from the centres of power and privilege). They observe too — with dismay — that these dissatisfactions result in alarming electoral decisions that succumb to the dubious appeal of ‘populist’ politicians, who will often only increase their dissatisfaction. They allow themselves no good account (certainly no self-critical account) of how and why this has come to pass. They, thus, draw the conclusion that the fault lies in the people themselves for (at best) their gu...

With the issuance of one crore GST Identification Numbers (GSTIN), the goods and services tax has become world’s most extensive tax system. In the last six months, the GST Council has lowered rates for many products, extended deadlines for filing of returns, and introduced an exemption system for exports. All these changes were demanded by domestic businesses. These are sure signs of an open and receptive government. However, the GST remains a work-in-progress despite introducing many positives to doing business in India. Some corrections in five key areas will make it more inclusive and efficient. OF ERRORS AND LIMITS 1. Make GSTN fully functional.  In the beginning, everything GST was to be online through the GST Network (GSTN). Firms were to file periodic online returns, pay GST and be done away with it. But as the GSTN is still not fully functional, manual processes crept in to keep the business going. Even the most central feature of GST, invoice matching or the ...