Business & Finance - Current Affairs for November, 2015

Bonds are debt instruments used for raising money from investors. Prior to the advent of masala bonds, corporates have to rely on avenues such as ECB. Masala bonds are rupee denominated bonds issued to international buyers. In the case of masala bond, corporate could issue INR 10 billion worth of bonds while paying back INR 11 billion in one year. As the Indian rupee will have limited convertibility, investors will lend dollar equivalent of INR 10 billion. Indian corporate then needs to pay back dollar equivalent of INR 11 billion with the currency risk being with the investor. International Finance Corporation, investment arm of WB issued a INR 1000 crore bond in November 2014 which earned the name masala bond to account for the Indian angle. Chinese yuan denominated Dim Sum Bonds are also there as are Japanese yen dominated bonds called Samurai.

Pharma major Cipla Ltd, through its completely owned subsidiary Cipla Health and FIL Capital Investments (Mauritius) II Ltd have signed an agreement regarding the consumer healthcare business of Cipla, divested as a subsidiary in July in 2015. Investment is subject to approval from FIPB.

Former US government forensics expert Jim Christy has been hired by computer security startup Cymmetria as the vice president of investigations and digital forensics. Use of decoy servers by Christy sought to reveal techniques of hackers. He retired from the US government in the year 2013. Cymmetria was founded in 2014 by Gadi Evron, a former PriceWaterhouseCooper executive. This startup is San Francisco based.

Reserve Bank of India in November 2015 has granted in principle approval to three following applicants to establish a Trade Receivables Discounting System:

- NSE Strategic Investment Corporation Limited (NSICL) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Mumbai
- Axis Bank Limited, Mumbai
- Mynd Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Gurgaon, Haryana

HSBC Holdings Plc has made the decision to shut private banking operations in India after a strategic review. Private banking customers will have the option to be a client of HSBC Premier, a global retail banking and wealth management proposition. Indian private banking HSBC unit has 70 clients and around 32,000 employees in India. HSBC India reported 12 per cent dip in pre-tax profit for the January-June period at USD 335 million due to a fall in the merchant banking, retail banking and wealth businesses.

The larges wireless carrier in China, China Mobile on 27th November 2015 has indicated that it will acquire sister company Tie Tong’s fixed line telecom business for USD 4.99 billion to boost its business presence in China. CMTie Tong which is the wholly acquired subsidiary of China Mobile has agreed to acquire fixed line telecom business from Tie Tong.

App based cab operator Ola has made the announcement that advisor to Infosys CEO Rajiv Bansal has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer. Banal resigned from Infosys and joined the startup in January 2016. Mitesh Shah, currently the CFO will strategise finance initiatives as part of Bansal’s team.

Fortis Healthcare through step down subsidiary Stellant Capital Advisory Services has entered into Share Purchase Agreement with Relier Health Trust Trustee Manager, a Singapore based company. Fortis will acquire 100 percent stake for USD 14.9 million. The transaction is subject to approval by regulatory authorities.

Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek signed a contract with credit card firm Visa Inc in association with a new Swiss watch that enables wearers to make payments. This device has been launched in China already where Swatch has partnered with China UnionPay. Swatch is now launching the watch in the US and Switzerland for which the collaboration with Visa Inc has been undertaken

TATA Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata has invested an amount which has not been specified in Singapore based start up Crayon Data. Crayon was founded by Srikant Sastri, an IIML alumnus along with Suresh Shankat in the year 2012. It has raised substantial funds from Jungle Ventures and Spring Seeds. Tata recently joined Jungle series as a special advisor. Crayon’s flagship product Maya empowers enterprises to deliver customised choices to consumers.

Japanese insurer Nippon Life will increase in stake in Reliance Life Insurance to 49% from 26% by investing INR 2265 crore. Deal values new entity Reliance Nippon Life Insurance Company at INR 10000 crore making it one of the highest valuations for insurance companies in the nation.

Country's largest software service firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it has partnered with Gfi Informatique to collaborate on smart cities projects in France.Gfi Informatique and TCS will offer the Intelligent Urban Exchange (IUX) advanced analytics solution developed by TCS Digital Software & Solutions (DS&S) Group, the latter indicated in a statement.

Lanco Solar Ltd, a subsidiary of LITL has signed an MoU with the Chhattisgarh government for establishing a 100 MW solar cell manufacturing plant in the state. LITL has already invested INR 1200 crore on the project which is towards establishing a poly-silicon refining and wafer plant and for setting up a 150 MW module plant.

Indian bank Axis bank has opened office in Dhaka to leverage business opportunities. The bank has already established its presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Colombo and Shanghai with representative offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi along with a totally owned subsidiary in the UK.

Pakistan and the US have made efforts to start the stalled peace process between Afghanistan and Taliban insurgents after a second round of talks were earlier cancelled. The understanding was reached during the November trip of Pakistan Army General Raheel Sharif to Washington. Pakistan is concerned about the security establishment in Afghanistan thwarting the peace process.

Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces has exited Gateway Hotel, Jodhpur and Gateway Hotel, Ummed, Ahmedabad. However, Taj will continue management of hotels till May 9, 2016 as per contractual terms agreed to beforehand. Taj Group has a network of 28 Gateway hotels currently and plans to have a portfolio of 50 Gateway Hotels within the coming few years. Gateway hotels are a brand located just a notch below Taj Vivant.

Airports Authority of India on 20th November 2015 signed an MoU with IL&FS Global Financial Services for overseas expansion. The letter is a subsidiary of infrastructure giant IL&FS. Through this collaboration, AAI is aiming to become global and identify opportunities for growth in MENA and CIS nations. AAI has developed more than 60 airports in India. Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited is one of the leading infrastructure development and financial companies in India.

PHDCCI has found that Asia and Africa are fast emerging as export destinations, beating traditional markets like US and EU. Share of advanced economies in Indian exports has fallen from 44% in 2004-2005 to 37% in 2014-2015. Share of developing nations in Asia to the country’s exports has risen from 48% in 2004-2005 to 50% in 2014-2015. India’s exports product composition to different regions is concentrated in top 10 commodities of exports. India also needs to enhance manufacturing sector productivity according to the report.

Country’s second largest software services company Infosys has completed acquisition of US based oil and gas consulting firm Noah Consulting. The acquisition of Noah Consulting had been announced last month for USD 70 million. With this acquisition, Infosys will offer end to end data management services to international oil and gas firms.

Under this agreement, the telecom major will provide its Wi-Fi and DTH services in Oyo branded hotels, initially covering 3,000 rooms within the next 3 months. OYO has the largest branded network of hotels in India and aims to provide seamless Wi-Fi experience for guests through long term strategic pact with Airtel.

The deal will strengthen Chennai-headquartered TAKE’s position as a fully integrated, differentiated life sciences services provider to large and small global pharmaceutical companies. It will also help expand the addressable market for TAKE and significantly enhance presence in Europe and the Nordic nations.

With this acquisition, the combined entity will replace TATA Sons Taj Group of Hotels as the largest hotel chain in terms of number of rooms. All cash acquisition is valued at USD 12.2 billion and the combined company will own a franchise with 5500 hotels and 1.1 million rooms worldwide.

Apollo Tyres has acquired German based tyre distributor Reifencom GmbH for Euro 45.6 million (around INR 301 crore). This is one of the largest tyre distributors in the country and it has online presence in 5 other nations-France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark plus it operates 37 stores and service centres across Germany. This acquisition is a strategic fit for Apollo Tyres given its growing European business.

Following Xiaomi and Motorola, Micromax subsidiary YU Televentures will seek the handsets offline in partnership with Reliance Retail. MicroVAX launched YU last year as an online brand. YU Televentures has inked a strategic partnership with Reliance Retail to this effect.

Global provider of cloud based e-commerce marketplace cloudBuy has signed an agreement with CII for online e-commerce gateway. This platform will facilitate transactions worth 3.5 billion pounds over the coming 5 years. Earlier, the two had inked an MoU to further formation of the contractual agreement.

Yes Bank has signed a pact with London Stock Exchange for issuance of bonds and equity with focus on green infrastructure finance under which USD 500 million green bonds will be issued by December 2016 on the bourse. The agreement may be used to raise capital equity through global depository receipt listing on the LSE. Leading British lender Stan Chartered has entered into an agreement with the government for a new financial services leadership program to further the Skill India initiative through the Stan Chartered-Chevening Financial Services Leadership Programme

Macquarie Bank Ltd has sold close to 6 percent stake in Hathway Cable and Datacom Ltd for INR 241 crore in an open market transaction on 13th November to Global private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. The shares were sold at INR 45.65 per share and picked up by a unit of Providence Equity Partners, P 5 Asia Holding Investments (Mauritius) Ltd. Providence Equity Partners owns 10.85 percent in Hathway Cable and Macquarie which earlier owned a 9.42 percent stake has sold 75% of it. This acquisition follows the easing of FDI norms in broadcasting by GoI.

India has around 52% of the customers that spend the least amount of time online even as 56% of them have found it is easier to locate products and services online, an Ericsson survey has found. A study by Ericsson Consumer Lab has found 52% of Indians are currently in the non-networked group and only 1 in 5 of the group uses the internet. The non-networked companies comprise 18% of the consumers.

In a move towards consolidation in the online automobiles classified segment, CarTrade has acquired rival company CarWale in a complete cash deal. The financial details of the merger have not been disclosed. German media major Axel Springer has exited the acquired firm, selling entire shareholding to CarTrade. Rival CarDekho has acquired Zigwheels, an auto portal owned by Times Group. The two companies receive over 32 million monthly visits and work with new as well as used car dealers listing more than 2,25,000 used cars for sale. Combined entity will work to outperform CarDekho and horizontal classified services such as Quikr and Olx. CarTrade has many investors including Warburg Pincus. Epiphany Ventures, JP Morgan and March Capital.

The platform enables users choose a product, pick a design and customise it, and Pai has invested in Gingercrush which currently has a design library of 81 licensed brands including Disney, Pixar Movies, Mattel and among 56 artists for customers to select from. Lai will join as advisor of the startup board and mentor the founding team as well as senior management for strong growth.

The largest lender in the nation SBI has become the first bank to offer wallet services for feature phone users. The mobile wallet Batua will be launched by SBI in December and will be available for non SBI customers as well. The app can be loaded on the phone. SBI has an annual IT budget of INR 3,000 crore, a 20 percent market share, a customer base of 28.6 crore, from which 2.3 crore are net banking customers and 1.2 crore are mobile banking customers.

GoI has relaxed FDI norms in the construction sector, boosting foreign investment into the housing sector, especially affordable housing. Government has relaxed the FDI norms in the construction sector by removing conditions relating to minimum built up area and capital requirement. Any project, irrespective of its size, will have access to FDI. This has also eased the rules for foreign investors to exit and repatriate investments.

Realty portal Housing dot com has promoted A. Hota as the new chief of staff. He has been with the group for close to 2 years. He has carried out revenue and monetisation initiatives for the company and will report to CEO Jason Kothari.

L&T has made the decision to sell Kattupalli Port in TN and entered into an in-principle agreement with the Adani group for the same. Sale is subject to state and central government approval. Port currently operated by L&T Shipbuiding, a subsidiary of L&T and will be sold to Adani Kattupalli Ports Private Limited, a subsidiary of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone. Kattupalli Port is deep water port with an international container terminal. It is a deep water all weather port.

Aviation company Boeing has joined forces with Hyderabad based TATA Advanced Systems Ltd for manufacturing aerostructures commencing with the AH-64 Apache helicopter. Collaboration is also for partnership in integrated systems development opportunities in the nation. The two companies will create a manufacturing CoE for producing aerostructures for the Apache choppers. JV marks Being’s commitment to the Make in India initiative. TASL offers integrated solutions for home, defence and aerospace security.

Wipro, India’s third largest software exporter has conducted overhaul of media and telecom business and a new leadership team is being put in place. Ayan Mukerji, who heads the media and telecom business unit has spent close to 3 decades with the company, has resigned. After a career of 28 years, Mukerji has pursued a career outside of the company. Mukerji joined Wipro as a management graduate from IIM-C in the 1980s.

Billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba has announced a USD 4.8 billion acquisition deal for video streaming service Youku Tudou. The latter is the Chinese YouTube. Alibaba will pay USD 27.60 in cash per US traded American depository share in a definitive merger agreement over Youku Tudou. This is around USD 1 more than the initial takeover bid made last month by Alibaba. The e-commerce giant owns more than 18% of Youku Tudou already. Deal was approved by Youku Tudou’s board.

Search engine giant Google has acquired maker of iOS apps for video editing, Fly Labs based in New York. Fly Labs has developed 4 iOS apps for editing videos effectively. The apps include Clips, Fly, Tempo and Crop. Fly was founded by Tim Novikoff and has over 3 million users in 150 different countries. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Israel’s largest mobile phone provider, Cellcom has made the agreement for acquiring upstart rival Golan Telecom for USD 300.9 million. Golan is owned by Xavier Niel and Michael Golan and is one of the 4 network operators in Israel apart from Cellcom. It has initiated operations in 2012 introducing affordable prices and has close to 900,000 customers.

TSP Vodafone has launched a scheme entitled “One Rate, One South” targeting prepaid customers in 5 south Indian states namely TN, AP, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala. The pack is available at 13,600 outlets as well as 57 exclusive and 268 mini stores. New pack offers facilities for outgoing local mobile calls while roaming is charged at 1 paise per second in S. India. Vodafone has approximately 35 million prepaid customers within this region. Close to 12% of 14 million prepaid customers in TN have paid roaming charges so that they can remain connected. Vodafone is aiming to ensure their access to every convenience during festive occasions.

Guinness an Irish stout company has announced that towards the close of 2016, beet will no longer contain trace amounts of fish bladder, once an integral part of the process of filtration. The new solution uses a state of the art filtration system for the process involving the 256 year old product.

Indian data centre infrastructure market will reach USD 2 billion in 2016 marking a 5.2% increase over 2015, according to research firm Gartner. Within the Indian IT infrastructure market, server revenue is pegged at USD 698 million in 2015 marking a 5.3% increase from 2015. The biggest segment with revenue will continue to be Enterprise networking with revenue expected to reach USD 963 million in the year 2016. This segment is the most rapidly growing market with forecast expected to rise 5.9% in 2016. A growing focus on mobility and big data activities in the country has prompted the rise of software defined networking. Storage market will reach USD 307 million in 2016, which marks a 3% rise from 2015.

Taxi aggregators Ola and Uber have signed agreements with the Rajasthan government for skill development and creation of entrepreneurial opportunities here.Ola will team up with the state government to provide skill development for 50,000 men and women over the next five years and Uber, on its part, will also collaborate on skills training and development programmes and create more than 35,000 entrepreneurial opportunities. Uber will also roll out pilot project for peer to peer ridesharing product

Nasdaq-listed IT services company Virtusa has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase 51.7% stake in Chennai-based Polaris Consulting & Services for approximately $270 million and an unconditional mandatory open offer to purchase up to 26% of the outstanding shares of Polaris from the public shareholders. Virtusa will acquire 51.7% of the paid up share capital of Polaris from certain promoter entities led by Arun Jain and certain other shareholders, including OrbiTech Private formerly known as Orbitech Limited. The Polaris transaction is expected to close during Virtusa's fourth fiscal quarter of March 31, 2016.

US based tech major Microsoft has announced partnerships to enable Indian organisations to explore previously unknown business areas and enrich customer and citizen experiences. The newly-launched local Microsoft Cloud and new devices will also catalyse digital transformation, the company indicated. Tech giant has also announced partnership with Justdial, Snapdeal and Paytm apart from launching a special cloud initiative for smart cities associated startups. According to the company, Justdial and Microsoft will explore the use of Bing and cloud-based analytics to provide and enhance customer experience and Paytm and Microsoft are working on three core areas of partnership. The companies will integrate the Paytm app and Paytm Wallet into Cortana to enable consumers to pay for their utility bills and carry out mobile transactions easily. Paytm will use Office 365 for merchants' inventory and account management. Payt. will also support Microsoft services through Merchant Network. Snapdeal will work with Microsoft Cloud platforms to create a digital automotive dealership.

Ride hailing app company Ola on 3rd November 2015 announced it would purchase vehicles from Japan based car company Nissan Motor’s local unit for fleet expansion as it competes with US based Uber for a bigger market share. Ola will also sign similar partnerships with other carmakers.

India is leading the global consumer confidence index in Q3 with 121 points followed by US, Philippines and Indonesia with 119, 117 and 116 points respectively. India’s economy may be slowing down but its consumer confidence score remains intact at 131.

Ratan Tata has invested in California based Wi-Fi carrier Sabse Technologies founded by Hotmail co founder S. Bhatia. This comes after his investment in US based virtual currency firm Abra. He has also backed food startup Holachef. On board of several VC funds like IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital and Jungle Ventures and online-deal making platform LetsVenture, he is a prolific start up investor. Through his investment company RNT Associates, he invests between a couple of lakhs to 10 crores in these companies.

Housing dot com has appointed Nikhil Rungta as Chief Marketing Officer to strengthen top team management. Prior to this, Rungta worked as a CMO for Google in India and Reliance Jio. He has over 2 decades of experience and started leadership roles in startups like Yebhi and Yatra.

Flipkart has appointed former MakeMyTrip CTO Sharat Singh and Ravi Krishnaswamy as VP of engineering for content and infrastructure respectively. Singh will lead the CMS engineering team which includes data management, quality, development, creation and content relevance. A technical strategy will be driven for content to create better user experience and purchase products on the app. Previous role in MakeMyTrip included development and execution of global technology stratagems and planning of ongoing technology innovations. He also set up a CoE and led product and delivery of engineering systems and automation at Shopzilla as MD India. He had also worked with Microsoft, Nextag. Krishnaswamy will focus on strengthening operations across IaaS and PaaS and understanding challenges pertaining to organisation design and bandwidth. He had earlier worked with Microsoft.

ADAG led RCom will take over Russian conglomerate Sistema’s Indian mobile telephony venture operating under the MTS brand. RCom has indicated that SSTL/Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd will hold 10% equity stake in RCom as a result of this deal. RCom will also assume liability to pay instalments for SSTL spectrum equalling INR 392 crore per year for the next decade as part of the deal.

In addition, RCom will acquire SSTL’s most valuable and superior 800/850 MHz band spectrum, suited for 4G LTE services, to supplement its own unique nationwide footprint of minimum 5 MHz contiguous 800/850 MHz spectrum aggregating 148.75 MHz.

India will have 9 crore 4G subscribers and 18 crore 4G smartphones by the year 2018. Firms like Airtel and Vodafone may benefit from this growth if Jio Infocomm from Reliance delays launch of services. 4G smartphone base is expected to jump from 5 million in 2015 to 180 million (18 crore) by 2018, leading to 4G subscribers accelerating from almost zero in 2016 to 90 million (9 crore) by FY 2018. Reliance Jiio is expected to be the market leader 2017 onwards, as per the report.

Finnish telecom group Nokia has inked numerous deals worth 910 million euros to sell services and equipment to China Mobile. The latter is the world’s largest mobile operator. Finnish firms’s contract includes agreement to roll out 4G wireless network and provide solutions in diverse fields such as network planning and software solutions.

International IT services company HCL Technologies has on 29th October 2015 acquired PowerObjects, a leading N. American provider of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for INR 299 crore. This will boost its global applications business. PowerObjects is a professional services firm that is focused on providing 100% service, support, education and add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics Customer Resource Management. The company is also the winner of 2012 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the year.

Chinese state backed technology group Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd will be purchasing a 25% stake in Powertech Technology for USD 600 million and is the largest shareholder in the chip packaging and testing industry in Taiwan. Alliance will boost the development of the fledgling chip industry in China. Tsinghua Unigroup will pay USD 2.31 per share in a private placement of new Powertech shares to garner 25% ownership of the firm.

Food ordering platform TinyOwl has raised INR 50 crore from current investors led by Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. The 2 year old Mumbai based company is looking at controlling burn rate and outsourcing deliveries while restructuring operations. New funds have given the platform 12 months of run time to focus on creation of a sustainable business in this domain. Its co founders are IIT graduates Harshvardhan Mandad, Gaurav Choudhary, Saurabh Goyal, Shikhar Paliwal and Tanuj Khandelwal. It also counts Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl among its investors.