Elon Musks acquires Twitter for $44 bn

Top of the Morning

In this episode, find out about Bank of India’s plans to raise Rs 2500 crore by issuing fresh equity shares, also find why Yes bank has initiated insolvency proceedings against Zee Learn.

Business Term of the Day: Short selling

Twitter is on its way to become a privately held company as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reached an agreement to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion on Monday. Musk will pay shareholders $54.20 per share, representing a 38% premium on Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1. After the deal was finalised in the early hours of Tuesday (IST), Elon Musk hailed free speech in a tweet.

State-owned Bank of India (BoI) on Monday said it will raise up to ₹2,500 crore by issuing fresh equity shares in order to comply with the minimum public shareholding requirement of 25 per cent.

Century Textiles & Industries, part of the Aditya Birla group, on Monday reported a ₹84 crore net income in the March quarter, making a turn around from a ₹5 crore net loss in the year-ago period as its sales jumped 45 per cent to ₹1,188 crore.

 Private lender Yes Bank has initiated insolvency proceedings against Zee Learn alleging a default on a financial facility worth Rs. 468 crores, Zee Learn said in an exchange filing on April 25. Zee Learn is part of the Essel Group that operates in the education segment across India. In the December quarter, the company reported a net loss of Rs 4.91 crore.

Veranda Learning Solutions: The recently listed learning solutions provider has acquired T.I.M.E. (Advanced Educational Activities), the leading test-prep institute with a pan-India presence operating through 188 centres for Rs 287 crore.

Moving on to markets

 Indian indices may witness a flat to negative start on Tuesday amid mixed global trends.

Global sentiments were uplifted after world’s richest person Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy social media platform Twitter.

Oil prices took a hit, along with stocks in Europe, over concerns of Covid-19 outbreak in China, while Asian equities were mixed in early trade on Tuesday.

 The yield on the 10-year government bond fell the most in 19 months as traders rushed to cover their short positions amid a drop in oil prices and US treasury yields. The yield fell by 12 basis points to 7.04% at the end of trading on Monday.

Business Term of the day

Short-selling is the sale of a security which the seller has not yet purchased. In due course, the short-seller will have to buy the borrowed security back from someone else in the market, in order to return it to the lender. Between selling and then buying back the security, the short-seller is said to have a short position. If the price of the security falls before it is bought back from the market, the short position will yield a capital gain (and vice versa).