Tata Sons will sell 0.65% stake in TCS, which will entail the sale of nearly 2.34 crore shares at a floor price of Rs4,001 per share. The deal size would be more than Rs9,362 crore. The floor price is about 3.7% lower than the last market price of TCS. The deal will be managed from the sell-side by JP Morgan and Citigroup. In less than a week, this is the second mega deal. Last week, BAT PLC had sold a 3.5% stake in ITC Ltd for a sum of Rs17,485 crore. Tata Sons has 72.38% stake in TCS, with current market valuation of Rs11 trillion.
Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC will see promoters divesting about 11.47% stake through the OFS (offer for sale) route. It will entail the sale of 3.3 crore shares of the AMC. The floor price has been set at a 5% discount to the last closing price at Rs450 per share. The deal would be worth around Rs1,485 crore. The stake sale will allow Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC to achieve the 25% MPS (minimum public shareholding), which is mandato0ry under listing regulations. Out of 11.47%, Aditya Birla group will offer 5% and Sun Life 6.47%.
Brent crude briefly surpassed $86/bbl mark on Monday, marking the highest level since November 2023. The escalation of Ukraine assaults on Russian energy infrastructure led to a spike in oil prices as it could lead to disruption of global oil supplies. Even the US based WTI Crude spiked to above $81/bbl. The strong Chinese industrial data has also helped oil prices, even as the recession in the UK and Japan continue to be an overhang. Russia also plans to boost its oil exports to 2.15 million bpd, mainly from Western ports.
Indian insurance sector received over Rs54,000 crore as foreign direct investment (FDI) in the last 9 years. This was largely driven by the liberalisation of overseas capital flow norms by the government. It may be recollected that the government had raised the permissible FDI limits in 2 tranches; from 26% to 49% in 2015 and then from 49% to 74% in 2021. The permissible limit is 100%, although any stake beyond 74% requires the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by the prime minister.
Tata Steel has decided to shut down its coke oven operations at its facility at Port Talbot in the UK. This is on the back of a steady fall in operational stability. This is part of the restructuring exercise. To offset the impact, Tata Steel will enhance the imports of coke. On the restructuring, the company is in advanced stages of negotiations with the labour unions. Tata Steel is transitioning to sustainable low-carbon-dioxide steelmaking and is investing £1.25-billion in electric arc furnace (EAF) technology at the Port Talbot facility.
CRISIL has just put out its quarterly outlook for the Indian economy. For now, CRISIL expects the 10-year benchmark G-sec yield in the range of 6.96% to 7.06%. On the GDP growth front, CRISIL expects 7.61% GDP growth in FY24 and 6.8% in FY25, due to higher rates and lower fiscal impulse, which could temper domestic demand. CRISIL also expects the consumer inflation to soften to 4.5% in FY25 on the back of cooling domestic demand and improved agricultural output. It expects first rate cut in June 2024 or later.
After the record high services trade surplus reported by the DGFT, economists rushed to tone down their projections for current account deficit (CAD) for FY24. The third quarter CAD is expected to be announced towards the end of March 2024. While previous forecasts of CAD for FY24 stood at 1.2%, now it looks more likely at around 0.9%. For January and February 2024, the services surplus almost entirely wiped out the merchandise trade deficit leaving a combined overall deficit for first 2 months of less than $3 billion. In first half of sugar cycle year 2023-24, Indian sugar output fell marginally by 0.64% to 280.79 lakh tones. This is as of March 15, 2024, with seven and a half months of the sugar cycle year left. Data was reported by Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA). Among the major sugar producing states, Uttar Pradesh saw a spike in sugar production at 88.40 lakh tones against 79.63 lakh tones last year. However, sugar output in Maharashtra fell to 100.50 lakh tones from 101.92 lakh tones. Karnataka sugar output declined too.
