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Business Standard, Reuters |  Singapore  Last Updated at March 22, 2019 09:37 IST Oil prices on Friday hovered close to 2019 peaks reached the previous day, propped up by supply cuts led by producer club OPEC and by US sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Brent crude oil futures were at $67.82 per barrel at 0122 GMT, down 4 cents from their last close but within a dollar of the $68.69 per barrel 2019-high marked the day before. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were at $60 per barrel, virtually unchanged from their last settlement and not far off their 2019 peak of $60.39 touched on Thursday. Prices have been propped up by supply cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-affiliated allies such as Russia, often referred to as 'OPEC+'. Despite a more than a quarter increase in crude prices this year, Canadian investment bank RBC Capital Markets said oil was "still below the fiscal breakeven level in a nu...

Moneylife Digital Team , 20 March 2019 While the number of fraudulent withdrawals from banks have declined, in value terms it has more than doubled to Rs109.56 core in FY2017-18, the Rajya Sabha was informed. Last month, replying to a question asked by Sukhram Singh Yadav, the then finance minister Piyush Goyal, said, "As per information furnished by Reserve Bank of India (RBI), with the proliferation of information technology (IT) and usage of related services, there has been an increase in the absolute number of complaints of withdrawing money illegally from bank accounts. As per RBI, the amount of automatic teller machine (ATM) or debit card, credit card and internet banking frauds of Rs1 Lakh and above, reported by scheduled commercial banks and select financial institutions (FIs) during 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 are Rs40.20 crore, Rs42.29 crore and Rs109.56 crore, respectively." Strangely, when asked whether it is also a fact that the amount withdrawn illegal...

Financial Express- March 21, 2019 Mindtree founders are making every possible effort to stave off a hostile takeover bid by L&T, which has launched an open offer for 31 per cent company shares after buying 20.32 per cent stake from investor V G Siddhartha. Though the company board has deferred its decision on a buyback plan to thwart the takeover attempt by L&T, action on this front cannot be ruled out. Meanwhile, Subroto Bagchi, one of the promoters of Mindtree, has also made an emotional appeal in a tweet saying that they must protect the “Tree” from people who have arrived with “bulldozers and saw chains” to cut it. Mindtree, it seems, doesn’t have much option left after deferring the share buyback programme to a future date. As a possible last resort, the company would have to bring in an investor who can take on L&T’s bid that has offered Mindtree Rs 980 per share valuing it at Rs 16,000 crore, according to media report. The company had announced deferring th...

Financial Express- March 20, 2019 Concept of CPSE ETF The conventional method of divesting stake in Public Sector Enterprises is either sale of shares to investors i.e. Initial Public Offer (IPO) or the Offer for Sale (OFS) route. One of the other mode is floating an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSE) ETF is the vehicle for divestment of a part of Government’s stake in certain CPSEs. The ETF route was an innovation against the conventional methods. CPSE ETF Background CPSE ETF is an open ended index scheme listed on the Exchange in the form of an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which tracks the Nifty CPSE Index. CPSE ETF New Fund Offer (NFO) was launched on March 2014. It was oversubscribed 1.45 times & the New Fund Offer (NFO) collection was Rs.4,363 crs., out of which Rs.1,363 crs. was refunded to investors due to limited issue size of Rs.3,000 crs. FFO was launched in January 2017 and was oversubscribed 2.28 times. FFO ...

Business Standard, March 22, 2019 Flipkart-owned online wallet PhonePe has received Rs 743 crore (approximately $111 million), through fund infusion from its parent entity in Singapore, company filings sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc showed. The fresh capital, which follows a series of mega infusions in 2018, tops up PhonePe’s war chest as the Sameer Nigam-led company looks to support user growth in a market heated up by the entry of Google Pay and Amazon Pay. According to the documents, PhonePe Singapore has infused the funds in the India entity by subscribing to 2,915,964 shares in the latter at Rs 2,450 apiece. PhonePe, Singapore, earlier called Flipkart Payments, is a fully-owned subsidiary of Flipkart, Singapore, which operates Flipkart’s e-commerce operations in India. PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart in 2016. After Walmart acquired majority control in Flipkart in May 2018, it became a step-down subsidiary of the US retailer. Nigam, CEO of P...

The Financial Express,    March 22, 2019 The trade war may finally start to bite for Boeing Co. The aerospace giant is the only non-consumer, non-tech US company that gets more than $5 billion of revenue from China, and as such, it was initially assumed to be amongst companies that would be most affected by trade tensions. So far, however, the impact from tariff crossfire has been rather limited. That may have been a reflection of China’s need for Boeing orders in the short-term to support local airlines and an inclination to maintain a balance between the US plane-maker and its European counterpart, Airbus SE. An eagerness to ensure Boeing’s ongoing participation at an assembly centre outside of Shanghai that is co-owned by Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (known as Comac) and an important part of the country’s strategy to build a homegrown aviation industry could have been another factor. But now, with Boeing on the defensive, China’s calculation of its politic...

Business Standard, Press Trust of India  Last Updated at March 21, 2019 The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism, while warning the country that another terror attack on India will prove to be "extremely problematic". "We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to reign in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to ensure that we don't have re-escalation (of tension) in the region," a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "And, if there's any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries," the official said on the condition of anonymity. Asked about the ...

The Financial Express,  By:  Saurabh Kumar   |   Updated: March 22, 2019 With the Model Code of Conduct being in force ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, key schemes of the petroleum ministry — Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) and fuel pump dealership licensing — are facing implementation hurdles. While there are little chances of new enrollment under the flagship PMUY till the election process is over, the oil marketing companies have written to the ministry seeking Election Commission’s approval to continue with distribution of pump licences. These developments come close on the heels of the government deferring the last date for bidding for the 14 oil and gas exploration blocks offered in the second round of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) by a month to April 10 in the wake of the elections. Officials said even if the bids were to be evaluated, the Code would stand in the way of declaring the winners. The last date of submission of bid for...

The Dawn, Mubarak Zeb Khan,  Updated  March 22, 2019 ISLAMABAD The Chinese government has finally offered Pakistan market access for three commodities — rice, sugar and yarn — worth $1 billion for the current calendar year, an official in the Commerce Division confirmed to Dawn on Thursday. The official said rice shipments to China have already begun as part of the deal which was agreed during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s four-day visit to Beijing and Shanghai in the first week of November last year. Under the agreement, exporters have been allowed to ship 200,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of sugar — total value of $300 million — to China in the ongoing calendar year. Moreover, the agreement also includes preferential market access for around $700m worth of yarn but it seems highly unlikely that Pakistan will have adequate surplus quantity of yarn to export to China as cotton production remains lacklustre. The Chinese authorities were unwilling to i...