Apple India’s Head changed, Maruti becomes Most Valuable, Ola acquires FoodPanda- Weekly Digest #57

As a reaction to Gujrat election results, the market was in a rollercoaster as it recovered after an initial tumble. The Sensex rose by 139 points to close at 33,602 points, while the Nifty gained 56 points to close at 10,389 points.
The road transport and highways ministry is seeking budget allocation of ₹5,000 crore for introducing government-owned electric bus fleets and building world-class bus ports across the country.
US candy maker Hershey Co said it would buy SkinnyPop popcorn maker Amplify Snack Brands in a deal valued at $1.6 billion. The move is expected to strengthen its position in the market.
Apple India’s head Sanjay Kaul has resigned from his position with immediate effect. This has come amidst Apple India reporting its slowest growth in India in 5 years.

Banks led by SBI have decided that the bidders for stressed assets in insolvency proceedings are required to disclose their source of funds and furnish a cheque for the bid amount to prove their bonafides.
Taxi aggregator Ola has bought Foodpanda India from its German parent Delivery Hero group in a stock deal valued at an estimated of $40 million. The company to further invest $200 million in the food ordering and delivery platform to combat its competition, UberEats.
Apple has appointed Michel Coulomb as the new head of India operations after the position was vacated by Sanjay Kaul.
Tata Steel initiated its brownfield expansion plan as its board approved raising ₹12,800 crore through a mega rights issue. The proceeds to be utilised for creating additional steel capacity of 5 million tonnes in Odisha.
HDFC’s BoD has approved a proposal to raise ₹ 3,000 crores by selling 5% equity shares to institutional investors. The proceeds to be utilised to maintain the stake in HDFC Bank and to foray into health insurance, affordable housing and stressed real estate.

India’s domestic car maker Maruti has overtaken Italian sports carmaker Ferrari as the world’s most expensive one in terms of price to earnings (P/E) multiple.
Haldiram has regained the top spot as the country’s largest snack company after more than two decades, surpassing PepsiCo in sales. This has been due to shifting in preference to packaged namkeen over western snacks.
Wipro received 341% higher response than the reserved number of equity shares in its buyback process. It had announced a buyback of up to 343.75 million fully paid-up equity shares at a price of ₹320 per share. It received applications for tendering 1,173.69 million equity shares.
Due to an unexpected surge in the price of Rcom shares by 45%, the short traders were left dazzled as they were forced to book losses. The reason for a sudden upsurge is unascertainable but could be due to possible insolvency proceedings. It closed at ₹17.27.

The SEBI has revived a plan to make it mandatory for listed companies to disclose loan defaults as soon as they occur to stock exchanges.
Adani Transmission has entered a deal to acquire Anil Ambani-led Reliance Infrastructure’s power generation and distribution business in Mumbai in a deal valued at ₹13,251crore. The deal marks Adani Transmission’s entry into power distribution business.
HDFC has sold its realty brokerage business HDFC Realty and its digital real estate business HDFC Developers, to online classifieds player Quikr. The all-stock deal will see HDFC pick up around 3.5% stake in Quikr, valued at estimated ₹357 crore.
CDB is in advance talks to take up 70% in development of Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) in Navi Mumbai. CDB had earlier been pushing for insolvency proceedings against RCom.
Shares of companies that were linked to the 2G scam jumped as much as 20% a special Central Bureau of Investigation court acquitted all key accused in the case. DB Realty ended in the 20% at ₹43.70. Sun TV Network ended up 4.5% at ₹982.10. Unitech ended up 11.9% at ₹7.92.

The Reserve Bank of India advised banks to start insolvency proceedings against defaulting lenders without waiting for the regulator’s instructions. Prompt action by lenders will help realise the best value for stressed assets
SBI has initiated insolvency resolution proceeding against Ushdev International, a company which was part of the second list released by the RBI.
Shashi Arora, head of Airtel’s Payments Bank, has resigned amidst a week-old controversy where the Sunil Mittal-owned telco was hauled up by the authorities for opening payments bank accounts without requisite approvals and consent of customers.

Source: The Economic Times
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