Business and Finance News Highlights of the week transcript on 12 March 2023

Let’s begin. The finance ministry and Reserve Bank of India are trying to work out how to place the next tranches of sovereign green bonds in FY24 in order to command a higher ‘greenium’ than the low 2-4 basis points discovered in the latest tranche in February. The ‘greenium’ is the discount on the yield that the sovereign green bond commands over traditional government securities. Analysts have suggested the government put out a regulatory mandate for financial institutions that would require them to invest a portion of their assets in such bonds. This, they believe, could be one way to generate demand for green bonds at relatively high greeniums. For the first time, the Centre mobilised Rs 16,000 crore through two tranches of green bonds in January-February.

Meanwhile, Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO, Uday Kotak this week tweeted that India is well ahead of the curve in the inflation fight, as countries across the world seek to combat the economic hindrance. The billionaire commended India’s fight against sticky core inflation, stating that the country is well ahead of its global peers. The billionaire further compared India’s repo rate and CPI to those of the US and Eurozone, showing India is at the forefront of battling rising prices. Kotak presented key interest rate and CPI figures from US and Eurozone, demonstrating that the interest rate doesn’t match the rate of inflation. He urged global central banks to move real interest rates ahead of the rate of inflation. Kotak has often demonstrated a hawkish attitude towards fighting against inflation, once tweeting that he believes interest rates will remain elevated for a longer period and that further rate hikes were a possibility.

On to economy. Services activity in India in February grew at the fastest pace in 12 years, with S&P Services PMI jumping to 59.4 from 57.2 in the previous month, helped by new order inflows and strong sales. February Services PMI rose against Reuters poll expectation of a fall to 56.2. Meanwhile, capacity pressures remained mild and jobs increased only marginally. This is while input cost inflation declined to a 29-month low. Courtesy a substantial moderation in cost pressures, input prices increased at the slowest pace in nearly two-and-a-half years, and output charge inflation softened to a 12-month low.

Next up, Industry. After losing $1.9 billion in a single day in wealth, Elon Musk this week lost his spot as the world’s richest person only 48 hours after he reclaimed the title from Bernard Arnault. Earlier last week, he retook the number one spot with the net worth at an estimated $187.1 billion. However, the shares of Tesla fell by more than 5 per cent on Wednesday, trimming Elon Musk’s net worth by nearly $2 billion. His current net worth right now is $184 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The world’s richest person now is Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, who has a fortune of $186 billion.

Moving on. The Securities and exchange board of India has banned 31 individuals including Arshad Warsi and his wife Maria Goretti Warsi from buying, selling or dealing in securities for manipulating shares of Sadhna Broadcast by uploading misleading videos on YouTube. Capital markets regulator SEBI said that promoters of Sadhna Broadcast, and Arshad Warsi, along with Manish Mishra, the creator of youtube channels ‘Moneywise’ and ‘The Advisor’ recommended investors to buy the company shares, inflating its price and later dumped it. In one of the videos, the accused said that the Adani group will take over Sadhna Broadcast Ltd and after the acquisition, the company’s margin will improve. The other video claimed that the company is moving from TV production to movie production and a big American corporation has entered into a contract for Rs 1,100 crore to produce four devotional movies where the money will be brought in by the American investor but the rights will remain with Sadhna.

Lastly, some IPO news. Divgi TorqTransfer Systems’ Rs 412 crore IPO concluded on 3rd March and was subscribed 5.44 times after receiving healthy interest from all categories of investors. The price band for the IPO has been fixed at Rs 560-590 a share. IPO investors can check their share allotment status online through either BSE website or the IPO registrar, Link Intime India’s portal. Ahead of the IPO, the company raised Rs 185 crore from anchor investors. At the upper end of the price band, the public issue is expected to fetch Rs 412 crore. The maximum number of shares a retail investor can bid for is 13 lots comprising 325 shares, amounting to Rs 1,91,750. The shares of the company are expected to list on the stock exchanges BSE and NSE on Tuesday, 14 March 2023.