Business & Finance - Current Affairs for September, 2017

To popularise the ‘Tribes India’ brand in national and international markets, Trifed has signed a memorandum of understanding with Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd for sale of tribal products through e-commerce giant www.amazon.in. As a part of the MoU, authentic tribal art and craft items crafted and sculpted by tribal artisans from all over the country will be showcased on the online portal for sale, an official release said. From a single store in Delhi in 1999, the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Ltd (Trifed) has established a chain of 42 retail outlets and tie-ups with 13 State-level emporiums. The nationwide expansion of the scheme to provide minimum support price for 24 minor forest produce (MFPs), such as karanj seed, mahua seed, tamarind, wild honey etc was announced. The scheme is already being implemented in nine States. For higher value addition of MFPs, big corporates shall be involved under PPP model. The public-private partnership (PPP) model will be based on utilising private entrepreneur skills in undertaking processing as well as marketing of the produce, creating infrastructure and providing enabling environment for undertaking value addition of systematic scientific lines. These will be sophisticated large value addition hubs managed by private entrepreneurs.

Sanjay Rajagopalan, senior vice-president, Infosys, who headed design and research, has quit the company, according to a posting on his personal page on the networking site, LinkedIn. He quit Infosys a month ago after working for more than three years with the firm. Earlier, he was a senior vice-president with the German software maker, SAP from 2004 to 2014. Former CEO & MD of Infosys, Vishal Sikka, had quit the company last month following a spat with the co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy. Infosys: Know More

• Infosys Limited is an Indian multinational corporation that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services.
• It has its headquarters in Bengaluru, India.
• Infosys is the second-largest Indian IT firm by 2016 revenues.
• Founded: 7 July 1981, Pune
• CEO: U. B. Pravin Rao (2017)
• Revenue: 10.21 billion USD (2017)
• Headquarters: Bengaluru
• Founders: N. R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani
• Key Subsidiaries: Panaya, Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, Skava

Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited (BFIL), formerly SKS Microfinance, on 11th Sept signed an exclusivity agreement for a potential merger with IndusInd Bank. For IndusInd Bank, the immediate benefit will be deeper penetration in rural areas. BFIL has more than 1,400 branches, around 7 million customers and a loan book of close to Rs 11,000 crore. BFIL already works as a business correspondent for IndusInd Bank. According to the IndusInd Bank statement, the agreement provides for a mutually agreed exclusivity period for due-diligence and discussions to evaluate a potential strategic combination between the company and BFIL by way of amalgamation through a scheme of arrangement or any other suitable structure. The BFIL scrip closed at Rs 967.25, up 3.34 per cent, while IndusInd Bank shares rose 5.56 per cent to close at Rs 1,790.65 on the BSE. The deal will bring a degree of business stability for the microfinance company, which has witnessed periodic surges in risk and uncertainty since 2010. BFIL: Know More

• Founded by Vikram Akula in 1997, SKS Microfinance became India’s first microfinance company to go public after it debuted on the BSE in July 2010.
• But trouble started soon afterwards in its biggest business base, Andhra Pradesh, where, following a spate of suicides by poor borrowers, the state government told people not to repay loans.
• The crisis led to a leadership change with Akula quitting the company as its executive chairman the following year.
• Currently 98.37 per cent of BFIL shares are held by the public and 86.33 per cent of these shares are with foreign portfolio investors.
• It was reported that a swap ratio of one share of IndusInd Bank for 1.75 shares of BFIL was agreed upon by both parties

The People's Bank of China has declared initial coin offerings (ICOs) illegal and wants them to “cease immediately”. A growing number of tech companies are opting to sell digital “tokens” because they are quick, easy and unregulated. The ban saw sharp falls in the two leading crypto-currencies, with bitcoin tumbling $200. Issuing ICOs - a relatively new phenomenon - has become popular in China, with close to $395m (£305m) raised from investors this year but it is part of a growing global trend. The research site CoinDesk suggests more than $1.5bn in capital has been raised through ICOs since the start of the year. That's up $256m from last year. The move is aimed at protecting investors and “dealing with the risks properly”, said a joint statement from the People's Bank of China, securities and banking regulators and other government departments. ICOs unlike the more traditional share offerings, involves companies raising cash with ICOs don't necessarily offer investors a stake or equity in their business in exchange for their money. There are legitimate ICOs out there, but a lot of companies are jumping on the ICO bandwagon because it is largely an unregulated space at the moment, and thus, an easy way to raise cash.

The Reserve Bank of India has listed HDFC Bank as a domestic systemically important bank (DSIB) under the bucketing structure identified last year. State Bank of India and ICICI Bank were identified as DSIBs under the RBI rules in 2015. The additional Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) requirement for D-SIBs has already been phased-in from April 1, 2016 and will become fully effective from April 1, 2019. The additional CET1 requirement will be in addition to the capital conservation buffer. D-SIB surcharge for HDFC Bank will be applicable from April 1, 2018. What is DSIB?

• The RBI had issued the framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs) on July 22, 2014.
• The D-SIB framework requires the RBI to disclose the names of banks designated as D-SIBs every year in August starting from 2015 and place these banks in appropriate buckets depending upon their systemic importance scores (SISs).
• In case a foreign bank having branch presence in India is a global systemically important bank (G-SIB), it has to maintain additional CET1 capital surcharge in India as applicable to it as a G-SIB, proportionate to its risk weighted assets (RWAs) in India.
• Based on their systemic importance scores in ascending order, banks will be plotted into four different buckets and will be required to have additional Common Equity Tier 1 capital requirement ranging from 0.20 per cent to 0.80 per cent of risk weighted assets.
• SIBs are perceived as banks that are ‘Too Big To Fail (TBTF)’. This perception of TBTF creates an expectation of government support for these banks at the time of distress.