With a big shortfall in indirect tax revenue — the collections in April-November were hardly 2% higher than the year-ago period versus FY19 growth estimate of 22% — the Centre has asked a clutch of central PSUs to speed up their planned share buybacks, a mechanism via which it wants to net upwards of Rs 12,000 crore this fiscal.

Bajaj Auto on Wednesday reported a 16% year-on-year increase in its standalone net profit at Rs1,101.9 crore during the October-December period, which was above analysts’ expectations. Revenues during the period also grew 16% at Rs7,409.4 crore, which was slightly below estimates.

Operating profit declined 2% at Rs1,223 crore, which was below estimates, while margin came in at 17.2% against 20.6% in the same quarter a year ago.

Essel Infraprojects is in the final stages of discussions to sell its solar energy portfolio to private equity investor Actis, according to sources. The sale of the portfolio, totaling 685 mw of installed and under-construction projects, could fetch the company about Rs 4,500-5,000 crore, sources told FE.

Essel Infra has also been in talks for the last few months with various investors to sell its roads portfolio comprising 14 projects, including those under construction.

State-owned NTPC’s net profit inched up by 1% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 2,385.4 crore in the three months ended December 2018 as country’s largest power generator showed signs of recovering from chronic coal supply woes plaguing the company since the beginning of 2017.

The company’s revenue increased 16% y-o-y to Rs 24,120.4 crore in the quarter as the average tariff at which NTPC sells electricity went up by more than 8% to Rs 3.47/unit. The power company generated 70 billion units of electricity in the period, 3.4% higher than the corresponding period last fiscal.

Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use. In doing so, Apple closed off Facebook’s efforts to sidestep Apple’s app store and its tighter rules on privacy. The tech blog TechCrunch reported late Tuesday that Facebook paid people about USD 20 a month to install and use the Facebook Research app.

State-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has posted a 91 per cent drop in net profit for the third quarter of the financial year to Rs 716.82 crore, owing to a higher inventory loss during the quarter. The company had a net profit of Rs 7,883.22 crore during the third quarter of the 2017-18 financial year.

The ICICI Bank’s then board, which rushed to give a clean chit to its former Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Chanda Kochhar in March 2018 without any investigation, is liable and can be prosecuted for violation of various sections of the RBI, Sebi Act, whistle-blower policy, and the bank’s own code of conduct, according to corporate lawyers.

With Rs 1.8 trillion ($25 billion) in bad corporate debt to clean up, State Bank of India is having an easier time negotiating with founders keen to avoid the nation’s two-year-old bankruptcy law, according to Anshula Kant, a managing director overseeing stressed assets at the lender. That’s because a crackdown by policy makers has convinced business owners that they risk losing their companies once the courts become involved.

Even as India struggles to manage its plastic waste, a new report has raised concerns about the impact of generating a cheap and polluting fuel from used tyres in pyrolysis plants.

The Guardian reported that, every month, the UK exports “thousands of tonnes” of used tyres to India. It suggests that most of these tyres are used by pyrolysis plants to produce fuel. Several of these plants flout regulations on pollutants released in the process.

ICICI Bank posted a fall of 2.7 per cent in net profit to Rs 1,604.9 crore for the quarter ending December as against Rs 1,650.24 crore in the corresponding period last year. The net interest income (NII) was recorded Rs 6,875 crore as against Rs 5,705 crore for the same period, a drop of 20 per cent. The private lender also recorded slippages at Rs 2019 crore.

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