(Bloomberg) -- Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India) Pvt. marked down its debt exposure to Vodafone Group Plc’s India venture to zero, concerned by the operator having to pay $4 billion in back-fees as early as next week. The carrier’s shares suffered a record plunge.The payment deadline has led to “significant uncertainty with respect to our exposure” to the carrier, the fund house said in a statement on Friday. Shares of Vodafone Idea tumbled as much as 39%, reflecting concerns over the future of the beleaguered company.Local wireless operators including Vodafone Idea Ltd. and Bharti ...
Shares in Vodafone’s Indian joint venture plunged after the country’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that telecoms companies must pay billions in retrospective licence and spectrum fees. requiring mobile operators to pay $13bn in historic levies. The shares recovered slightly to trade 26 per cent lower following a report that the company, in which the UK group holds a 45 per cent stake, may be able to approach India’s highest court for an extension to a January 23 deadline for it to pay about $7bn.
(Bloomberg) -- India is open to hearing wireless carriers’ suggestions to help ease payment of $13 billion in overdue fees, according to a government official with knowledge of the matter.Stripping out interest from the dues or paying the amount in tranches are some ideas that the government can discuss, the official said, asking not to be identified citing rules. An independent panel can examine such requests provided the companies commit to pay some amount immediately, the official said. The official spoke before the top court on Thursday rejected telecommunication operators’ plea to review ...
Moody's Investors Service has today placed Yes Bank Limited's long-term foreign currency issuer rating of B2 under review, with the direction uncertain. Moody's has also placed the bank's long-term foreign and local currency bank deposit ratings of B2, and its foreign currency senior unsecured MTN program rating of (P)B2, under review, with the direction uncertain.
(Bloomberg) -- Follow Bloomberg on Telegram for all the investment news and analysis you need.India’s Supreme Court ruled that wireless carriers including Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Idea Ltd. need to pay $13 billion of dues to the government, rejecting an appeal by operators struggling to stem losses and reduce debt.A three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on Thursday dismissed review petitions filed by the telecommunication companies against the October verdict, according to updates on the court’s website. Under that ruling, Vodafone Group Plc’s India venture has ...
Shares of Vodafone Idea fell as much as 40% on Friday, losing $975 million in market value, after India's top court rejected mobile carriers' petitions for a review of its order to pay billions of dollars in levies to the government. India's mobile carriers had filed petitions to review an October ruling by the Supreme Court that upheld a long-standing government demand that wireless carriers pay 920 billion rupees ($13 billion) in overdue levies and interest. The court's rejection on Thursday of petitions by Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and the now-defunct Tata Teleservices is likely to ...
Indian telecoms tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal is something of a survivor, having watched competitor after competitor succumb to a vicious price war that has ravaged his industry for three years. But in the ...
Of course Jaguar Land Rover is using a Range Rover to yank around an electrified Jaguar sedan mule. At least, we think the car sitting on the trailer is a test mule for the recently announced XJ successor. Jaguar has said it’s going to make an all-electric version of the car, but it’s going to use the new MLA platform that will also support a gas engine and hybrid versions.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The anguish is palpable. First, it was the news that India’s nominal gross domestic product is growing at its slowest pace in more than four decades. Now comes the inflation data for December, showing the steepest rise in consumer prices since July 2014. If this is the onset of stagflation, then it will be very hard to beat back the blues. But is that what we’re seeing?The risk of economic stagnation combined with high inflation has indeed risen, though the former remains the dominant force. For the central bank to get nervous and switch prematurely to a hawkish stance ...
(Bloomberg) -- India has more than 560 million internet users, all generating data by the terabyte. Soon they’ll have an unprecedented amount of control over their digital financial footprints, with the ability to decide what to share, with whom, and for how long.India’s top banks are getting ready to roll out a system that gives consumers access to a wide swath of their financial data and allows them to share it instantly. Backed by the Reserve Bank of India, it’s an ambitious approach that combines privacy protection with credit reporting: if it works, it could unlock the credit market for ...
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Before it results in a tragedy for all of India’s banking, regulators need to step in and end the farce called Yes Bank Ltd. The latest shenanigans make it very clear that the authorities need to stop being spectators — and act. The original cast has vanished. The co-founder who drove the country’s fifth largest private-sector bank into a ditch of bad corporate loans has sold out. Institutional shareholders are heading for the exit. Retail investors left holding more and more of the stock are waiting for lifesaving capital. The new management keeps dangling improbable ...
India’s Supreme Court ruled that *the five-month digital lockdown imposed on the Kashmir region by Narendra Modi’s government is unlawful and gave the administration seven days to justify its continued use. In a judgment on the constitutionality of internet restrictions, India’s highest court said on Friday that an indefinite internet suspension was “impermissible” and should only be enforced in “unavoidable” situations. India’s citizenship law: what is it and why has it stirred such anger?
(Bloomberg) -- Yes Bank’s shares and dollar bonds plunged after an independent director resigned citing corporate governance concerns at the lender.Uttam Prakash Agarwal said in a phone interview that he resigned on Friday, citing what he described as deteriorating standards of corporate governance and compliance failures. He blamed the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Ravneet Gill and other senior executives for the alleged failings.Yes Bank shares fell 5.4% in Mumbai, the biggest drop in a month. Its 3.75% dollar notes due February 2023 declined 4.7 cents on the dollar to 79.9 cents, the ...
Carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) posted a 6% fall in full-year sales on Friday after a challenging year in which its performance was hit by the weakening Chinese autos market and falling demand for diesel vehicles in Europe. Retail sales stood at 557,706 vehicles in 2019, hit by a 13.5% slump in China, but in the last six months the firm reported double-digit growth in the country, with overall company sales up 1.3% in December. At the start of 2019, JLR announced plans to cut around 10% of its workforce and it has been pursuing measures to reduce costs and improve cash flows by 2.5 billion ...
Two of the top three telecom operators in India are beginning to address one of the biggest challenges hundreds of millions of their subscribers face in the country each day: poor call quality and abrupt voice drops. Reliance Jio, India’s second largest telecom operator, announced today that it now supports voice and video calling functionality over Wi-Fi networks. The 4G-only network said it has started to roll out the feature to all of its subscribers in India and expects to reach all of its 360 million consumers by next week.
