Facing the prospect of low traffic volumes on some of its upcoming highways owing to parallel projects, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has tweaked the second bundle of contracts to be offered under the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) model.

The stretches that were found saturated in terms of traffic volumes will now be replaced with those earmarked for the third tranche of bidding.

The Narendra Modi government comfortably defeated the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha on Friday. But if the debate was a trailer of the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a united Opposition, it ended in a stalemate.

To deepen the corporate bonds market, the Securities and Exchange Board of India on Friday came out with a proposal that will require large corporates to raise 25 per cent borrowings through this route from next financial year.

The framework is proposed to be implemented from April 1 next year and the large corporates identified as on March 31, 2019 will have to garner at least 25 per cent of their borrowings made in 2019-20 through bond market, Sebi said in a consultation paper.

Shares of Microsoft Corp were set to open at a record high on Friday, after the company reported another blockbuster quarter, backed by growth in its legacy software business and Azure cloud computing services.

Shares of one of the technology world's oldest and best-known names rose 4 per cent to $108.50 in trading before the bell, potentially adding nearly $32 billion to a market capitalisation that was already $802 billion at close on Thursday.

Domestic bourses recovered after falling for two straight sessions in early trade on Friday as the benchmark Sensex recovered over 150 points driven by a fresh round of buying ahead of the no-confidence debate in Lok Sabha on Friday.

Besides, persistent buying by domestic institutional investors (DIIs) too influenced sentiment.

Microsoft has said its revenue and profit climbed in the recently ended quarter, getting results from its bets on cloud computing services and artificial intelligence.

The US tech giant reported its net income increased 10 per cent to $8.8 billion on revenue that was up 17 percent to $30.1 billion when compared with the same period last year.

The rupee recovered from its all-time low, rising 9 paise to 68.96 against the American currency in late morning deals on bouts of dollar-selling from banks and exporters amid higher domestic equities. The rupee rose to 69.01 from yesterday’s record closing level of 69.05 at the interbank foreign exchange here. The volatile domestic unit later slid to a fresh life-time low of 69.13 before recovering to 68.94 in morning trade; it was quoting at 68.96 at 1030 hrs.

Bajaj Auto Ltd on Friday reported 24.5 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 10.41 billion for the first quarter ended June 30, 2018 riding on robust sales.

The company had posted consolidated net profit of Rs 8.36 billion in the same quarter of the last financial year, Bajaj Auto said in a BSE filing.

India’s government is holding up Facebook Inc.’s plans for a nationwide launch of its WhatsApp payments service over concerns about how users’ data will be stored and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, or MEITY, has asked WhatsApp and its partner banks to supply more details about the payments system, said ministry officials, who asked not to be named because the matter is private.

Kotak Mahindra Bank on Thursday reported a 12% year-on-year (y-o-y) rise in standalone net profit for the quarter ended June at Rs 1,025 crore on the back of healthy net interest income (NII) and improved asset quality. NII, or the difference between interest earned and interest expended by a bank, rose 15% to Rs 2,583 crore for the quarter.

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