AB Nuvo-Grasim Merger, Yes Bank’s share sale, CBI search JAL Offices- Weekly Digest #9

Deepak Parekh, HDFC’s chairman, and Analjit Singh, chairman of Max Group announced the merger of their life insurance businesses. This will create a new entity, which will be India’s largest listed life insurance company with an estimated market value of Rs67,000 crores.
The government has announced opening date of the largest spectrum sale as 29th September. The government is expecting a minimum revenue of Rs 5,56,000 crores from the sale, but it may fall short of its target owing to low demand.
Idea’s Q1 net profit falls to Rs 497 crores, down by a margin of 36%. This has been attributed to higher costs and pressure on data growth.
Swiber Offshore’s Indian subsidiary has appealed to the Bombay High Court to stop the state-run ONGC from invoking a bank guarantee of $105 million after its parent company ran into financial troubles. It had furnished bank guarantee after bagging a maintenance and service contract from ONGC.

A high-level panel has been set up under Niti Ayog CEO, Amitabh Kant, with an aim of liberalising the e-commerce policies and to give a further boost to the sector by reevaluating the rules it issued in the month of March.
Infosys has appointed Vishal Salvi for the post of Chief Information Security Officer. the position had been vacant since the last CISO, Prabhakar Malya retired from the position in July 2014.
Dharmapal Satyapal Group, known as DS group, is looking to acquire one of the country’s largest independent gourmet food retailers, Le Marche. Le Marche director Nakul Yadav, however, has said that they are in talks with more than one prospective buyer.
In a $750-850 million deal, Vodafone India has renewed its technology outsourcing contract with IBM for five years, beating other prospective candidates such as Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and TCS among others.
NHAI is looking to raise a sum of Rs 5,000 crores from EPFO by the issue of bonds to fund its construction of greenfield highway projects. The period of such bonds is estimated to be 25 years, with interest rate of 8.03%

Yes Bank is making preparations for launching a $1 billion share sale to institutional investors, this will dilute the stake of promoters from 22% to 11-12% in the bank. This would be this year’s biggest issue, made in view to take advantage of expected economic revival in India.
US-based Vilac marked up the valuation of Flipkart shares by 10% to $108.04 per share, up from its last valuation of $98.19 per share. Prior to this, Vilac had marked down its valuation of the shares of the e-commerce giant consecutively twice. This increases the valuation of the company to $11..55 billion.
AAP Government in Delhi is formulating new policies for app-based taxi services such as Ola and Uber by placing and fixing a Tariff Ceiling on fares they charge from the customers. It also looks to improve safety norms for the companies.
Tata Chemicals is proceeding with the sale of its business of selling and distributing urea and manufacturing of customised fertilisers to Norway’s Yara Fertilisers India Private Limited. The valuation is expected to be around Rs 2,670 crores.
Microchip giant Intel has acquired San Diego-based deep learning startup Nervana Systems for a value of $400 million.

Aditya Birla Nuvo to merge with Garsim, effectively creating an entity worth Rs 62,700 crores.The financial services business of Nuvo would be demerged and listed, said Birla, chairman of the group. This has caused a slump in prices of the shares of both the companies.
Indian private equity firms, Multiples and ChrysCap are frontrunners for acquiring a 13% stake in Hero FinCorp. Both firms have submitted their bids at around $90 million, valuing the stake 4 times its book value.
Hyderabad-based Greenko Group has raised a sum of $500 million by selling Green Bonds to overseas investors. This is India’s first high-yield issue of its kind.
Leading state-run energy companies are going to make investments of more than Rs 5,000 crores in equity in a special purpose vehicle to revive fertiliser plants. Companies such as OilCorp, Coal India and NTPC are lead investors.

CBI carried out the searches at the office of Jaiprakash Associates regarding the insurance claims the company made from United India Insurance Corporation Limited. The search was carried at the Noida office of the company.
Cost Price Index for the month of July 2106 rose by 6.07% from July 15. This has been above RBI’s target of 5% by the month of March 2017. Economists were expecting it to be near 5,9%
Sun Pharma reported a 266% increase in the consolidated profits for the 1st quarter, to Rs 2,034 crores. This has been attributed to topline and operational performance.

Source: The Economic Times
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