The Government may consider reducing customs duty on certain medical devices in the forthcoming budget with an aim to boosting domestic manufacturing of such goods, sources said.

The move would also help promote the Government’s ambitious Make in India initiative, said the source.

The delay in timely completion of Coal India projects worth Rs 11,000 crores is a matter of concern, not just because it aggravates the coal shortage but also leads to increasing project costs. India, for instance, imports over 200 million tonnes of coal a year, with a huge outgo of foreign exchange. It’s a Catch-22 situation, because while India has a lot of coal resources, other issues like getting environmental clearances and land acquisition, among other things, are monumental hurdles.

The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) on Monday became the owner of a bank when it completed the acquisition of a 51 per cent controlling stake in IDBI Bank. The insurer will have five nominees on the bank’s board, while the government will have two.

IDBI Bank is now a subsidiary of LIC after allotting 82,75,90,885 equity shares to the insurer at a price of Rs 60.73 per share, aggregating Rs 5,025.96 crore in the final tranche of the preferential issue.

The rejection of Larsen and Toubro’s (L&T) share buyback plan by Sebi has led to questions on whether the standalone or consolidated financials of a company should be considered. However, proxy advisory firm IiAS feels the latter is a more prudent method of defining parameters.

On Saturday, L&T had announced that the market regulator had denied it permission for a Rs 9,000-crore share buyback programme.

Even as Vodafone Idea has a board meeting on Wednesday to finalise plans to raise Rs 25,000 crore of capital, the government is likely to turn down a request by the Cellular Operators Association of India — RJio does not support the proposal though it is a COAI member — to give telcos a two-year moratorium on their deferred-payment obligations for spectrum bought in the past. COAI’s letter is the fourth written since the end of November last year.

The battle for the Indian consumer was never going to be an all-American affair.

Walmart Inc.’s splashy acquisition last year of Flipkart Online Services Pvt., the homegrown e-tailer giving Amazon.com Inc. a solid run for its money, might have given the impression of a two-horse race. But as I argued (here and here), billionaire Mukesh Ambani wasn’t going to watch from the sidelines.

Top officials in the ministries of finance and corporate affairs will huddle with senior bankers on Tuesday to discuss key issues in the aftermath of the IL&FS crisis, including liquidity and challenges being faced by public sector banks (PSBs) in providing for their exposure to the debt-laden company, official sources told FE.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google was at the receiving end of a hefty fine of 50 million euros ($56.8 million) by France’s privacy regulator, which used its new powers to levy much higher penalties for the first time under European Union data protection rules.

France’s data authority CNIL said the amount of the fine was “justified by the severity of the infringements observed regarding the essential principles” of the EU’s General Data Protection Rules, or GDPR.

Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) on Monday reported a 22.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) rise in its standalone net profit at Rs 1,291 crore for the third quarter of FY19. The profits were driven up by a good growth in the top line and also due to a write-back in provisions.

While provisions in Q3FY18 totalled `212.77 crore, in the December 2018 quarter there was a write-back of `32.3 crore.

The benchmark BSE Sensex fell over 100 points on Tuesday after a five-session winning spree as investors cashed profits in IT, metal, banking, consumer durables, power and auto shares amid sustained foreign fund outflows.

Cues from other Asian markets were weak too.

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