The first half of 2023 saw a sharp spike in Indian companies raising funds from foreign sources. The fund raising was up 12% at $9.7 billion. The fundraising was led by Reliance Industries which managed to raise funds despite the geopolitical uncertainty. Even Reliance Jio is currently in talks to raise funds worth $1.6 billion to fund equipment purchase from Nokia. However, this would also depend on the interest rates and too much hawkishness does not bode well. Demand can increase if global interest rates start to cool.
The lenders of the beleaguered Reliance Capital voted in favour of the resolution plan submitted by IndusInd International Holdings Ltd of the Hinduja group. They had made the highest cash offer of Rs9,661 crore and was incidentally the sole bidder in the second round. The deal is good since the total receipts would Rs10,200 crore (including cash balance) against total debt of Rs16,000 crore, which implies 65% debt recovery. However, Torrent group objected to second round bidding and that is in Supreme Court.
It is official that ICICI Securities will be delisting from the stock exchanges and will once again become a unit of ICICI Bank. Public shareholders of ICICI Securities will be allotted 67 shares of ICICI Bank for every 100 shares of ICICI Securities held. ICICI Bank has approved the delisting, but the approval of shareholders, creditors, NCLT and RBI is still pending. ICICI Securities, being a low capital consuming business, internal accruals are enough to fund business growth. In Q4FY23, the company reported net profit of Rs263 crore.
Bajaj Finserv made a quiet foray into the mutual funds, becoming the 43rd AMC in India. It will debut with one liquid fund and one overnight fund. Apart from these, Bajaj Finserv has filed five other schemes also with SEBI, of which three will be equity oriented funds. Mutual fund AUM touched all-time high of Rs43.50 trillion in May 2023. These debt funds are targeted at retail investors, HNIs and institutional investors. Liquid funds delivered 6.1% returns on an average, while the overnight funds delivered 5.98% in one year.
TCS is moving into high gear on the jobs scam. It has banned 6 employees and 6 staffing firms; with more employees under the scanner. TCS has not quantified the gains made by these employees. Some staff members had delivered favoured certain recruitment firms, which had raised the needle of suspicion. The investigations were based on whistleblower complaints. The Tata group generally places lot of emphasis on ethical conduct of employees. TCS will also tighten the processes to ensure such cases do not recur.
With SEBI reducing the timeline for listing IPOs from 6 days to 3 days, market players are worried that it could lead to teething problems; although it will be implemented in two phases. The shorter time frame will give the issuer and investors faster access to churn. With UPI and ASBA in place, SEBI had already consulted with the market infrastructure players on the feasibility of such a move. However, analysts feel that not all the brokers, DPs and registrars have the technical capability to handle such a tight schedule.
June 30, 2023 will mark the last board meeting of HDFC Ltd that Deepak Parekh will address. It will bring the curtains on an illustrious career of a man who spent 45 years building HDFC to what it is today and who, along with the legendary HT Parekh, virtually built the home finance business in India. Parekh also sits on the board of several top notch Indian companies and has been the go-to man, whenever there has been any crisis or challenge in financial markets. Deepak Parekh is a bridge, sudoku and cricket enthusiast.
Adani Total Gas will invest up to Rs20,000 crore over next 8 years to expand the infrastructure for retailing CNG to automobiles and piping gas to households and industries. Currently, ATGL has 460 CNG stations in India and retails in 124 districts with over 7 lakh consumers for its piped cooking gas alone. CNG & PNG remain two of the cleanest gases and will continue to be priority. It is looking to fast-track steel pipeline laying and building CNG stations at a quicker pace. It plans to add over 1,800 CNG stations in next 7 years.