Some of India’s top business houses such as Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Aditya Birla Group are among about 100 entities that have applied for payment and small bank licences, the application deadline for which ended on Monday. Bharti Airtel was the first to announce plans for a payment bank licence, through an association with Kotak Mahindra Bank, on Thursday.

Reliance Industries (RIL) kicked off this year’s first benchmark issue of bonds on Thursday by raising $1 billion through a dollar bond issue. The funds would be used for its ongoing capital expenditure, RIL said in a statement.

Despite its rich cash pile (Rs 78,691 crore as of December 2014), RIL prefers to raise debt to finance its ventures. Its cash pile, however, is down from Rs 83,456 crore in December 2013. Between December 2013 and December 2014, RIL’s debt rose from Rs 1,42,084 crore to Rs 1,50,007 crore.

HONG KONG: Reliance Industries has announced an offering of 10-year 144A/Reg S bonds to yield around 265bp over US Treasuries.

The fixed rate senior unsecured US dollar benchmark bonds are expected to be rated on par with the issuer at Baa2 from Moody's and BBB+ from Standard & Poor's.

To take on its public sector peers in the fuel retailing segment, Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to leverage technology.

“We would go for an aggressive automation-based instant reward scheme, providing an edge over the competition, which lacks nationwide automation,” RIL said after its result announcement last week. This was to provide superior customer value across the network, it said.

The drop in crude oil and natural gas prices has led Reliance Industries' (RIL) three shale gas joint ventures (JVs) in America to pare operating and capital expenditure.

Shale gas, a business RIL expected would begin contributing significantly to its revenue by 2015, has been hit with a sharp downturn in commodity prices, especially in the case of crude oil.

Weighed down by a steep decline in global crude oil prices, which hurt the profitability of its core refining business, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Friday reported a 4.5 per cent drop in its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December 2014.

In line with market expectations, net profit for the quarter was Rs 5,256 crore, compared with Rs 5,502 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s standalone net profit stood at Rs 5,085 crore, down 7.72 per cent and the first such drop in the past nine quarters.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Mukesh Ambani's RIL six weeks' time to respond to the CAG report on gas pricing from the KG basin.

The SC also allowed petitioners, including CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta, to file response on government's new guidelines on gas pricing.

The premium promised by the government for natural gas produced in geologically challenging conditions must be linked to the prevalent market prices of a basket of alternative liquid fuels, with a discount factor that would reduce progressively, allowing the price to come close to arm’s length price over a period of three to five years, major private sector explorers have argued.

Markets pared early gains in late morning trades as investors booked profit at higher levels after reports suggest that retail inflation is likely to be on the higher side. The government will detail November IIP and December CPI data later today.

At 11:40AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 22 points at 27,436 and the 50-share Nifty was trading flat at 8,285.

In a New Year gift to its shareholders, Reliance Industries (RIL) completed its long-drawn acquisition of Network18 without breaking a sweat, at a fraction of the costs originally proposed. The open offers of Network18 Media & Investments and TV18 Broadcast, expected to cost about Rs 2,200 crore, were completed at a total expenditure of Rs 17 crore as very few investors tendered their shares in the offer, according to exchange filings by the two media firms on Thursday.

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