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Financial Express Dated: November 29, 2019 By Urvashi Valecha The National Stock Exchange (NSE) is looking to digitise around 50% of its regulatory processes by next year, chief technology and operations officer Shiv Kumar Bhasin said on Thursday on the sidelines an industry summit organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce. Currently, the NSE has around 2,700 paper processes that still exist and the bourse is working towards digitising them in FY21. Bhasin said there were more technological innovations in the pipeline. One of these innovations would be making the entire marketplace digital. “When any particular business task is down, today they (traders) still have to contact the staff and send emails, we want to fully automate that process,” Bhasin told FE. The bourse is working towards upgrading the host trading system to a hybrid cloud infrastructure. This will make the stock exchange better equipped to handle sudden booms in trading. Bhasin said, “Today, we handle 2

Live Mint Dated: November 28, 2019 By:  Bloomberg The private-sector lender aims to raise about $1.2 billion in capital Yes Bank shares have more than doubled since October 1, the best performance on the benchmark Sensex. Mumbai:  An Indian lender that’s creaking under the weight of bad loans and exposure to the nation’s shadow-banking crisis is poised to release details of a crucial fund-raising plan. Yes Bank  Ltd. is expected to name the investors and the amount of money they will contribute after its board signs off on the plan at a meeting on Friday. Then it will be up to the Reserve Bank of India to consider approving the arrangement. India’s fourth-largest private-sector lender aims to raise about $1.2 billion in capital and says it has received offers from bidders including an unnamed North American family office. Chief Executive Officer Ravneet Gill, who is about nine months in the role, has said raising the money will keep the bank running for the next two yea

The Telegarph Dated: November 29, 2019 By:  By  PTI  in New Delhi Digital payments major Paytm plans to raise another round of funding worth $1 billion and is in discussions with multiple investors, including former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, according to sources. Sources close to the development said the discussions are on and might take a few weeks to get finalised. They added that the funds will be used to expand the merchant offerings across India to equip them with technology and various other services. Paytm declined to comment, while a response from Cameron could not be elicited immediately. Paytm had earlier this week announced a $1 billion (around Rs 7,173 crore) fund raise, led by US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price. Existing investors Alibaba, Softbank and Discovery Capital had also participated in the funding round. Interestingly, Paytm founder and chief executive officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted a photograph of him and Cameron on T

Business Line Dated: November 27, 2019 Global rating agency Moody’s expects the Centre’s   fiscal deficit to touch 3.7 per cent of the GDP. For all States put together, it is estimated to be three per c ent. The Centre has targeted to keep the deficit at 3.3 per cent for the current fiscal (2019-20), but it has already reached 92.6 per cent of the Budget estimate in first six months of the current fiscal. “Persistent spending pressures and slower economic growth will result in continued fiscal deficits,” the agency said in its report while adding that by fiscal year-end March 2020, it is projected that government deficits will be about 3.7 per cent GDP for the Centre (slightly higher than the 3.4 per cent posted in fiscal 2019) and around 3 per cent for States, adding up to a general government deficit of about 6.7 per cent. It said that the government was facing growing challenges meeting its medium-term fiscal consolidation goals amid a slowing economy, which has been

Business Line Dated: November 27, 2019 By:  Bloomberg  The earliest-available indicators of China's economic performance point to a continued slowdown in November. Economic growth was already the slowest in almost three decades in the third quarter, and the Bloomberg Economics gauge aggregating the earliest data from financial markets and businesses shows that continuing, with a worsening picture for trade, sales manager sentiment, and factory prices. While tensions with the United States (US) have eased since the two sides announced talks toward a so-called phase one deal last month, a leading indicator for trade flows in Asia, South Korean exports, still contracted almost 10 per cent in the first 20 days of November. That is an improvement from Septembers worst result in a decade, but it indicates that high-technology trade across the region is still struggling as the Christmas shopping season approaches. Profits at Chinese industrial firms fell the most on record

Business Line Dated: November 27, 2019 By:  D Ravi Kanth,  Geneva  Funds for Appellate Body cut drastically The US has created a “new normal” at the World Trade Organization’s highest court for resolving global trade disputes. Washington imposed wrenching conditions on the use of funds for Appellate Body (AB) members that would require the WTO Secretariat to spend only CHF 1,00,000 ($1,00,240), down from CHF 7,91,000 ( $7,93,056) to adjudicate a trade dispute, trade envoys said. The new normal has been finalised after the US had blocked the WTO’s biennial budget for 2020 and 2021 due to alleged irregularities in the expenses incurred for AB members and the trust funds provided by member countries. It will be placed for approval before the WTO’s budget committee meeting today. Moreover, the arrangement worked out between the US and the WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo and the Deputy Director-General Karl Brauner will place 10 appeals that are pending before the Appe