Reliance Industries: The oil-to-telecom conglomerate will announce its March quarter earnings later today. India’s most valuable company is likely to report at least a 40% year-on-year growth in net revenue in March quarter, while profit is seen rising 30-100%.
Mahindra & Mahindra: The Mahindra Group has initiated a restructuring to trifurcate its flagship automobiles business that contributes 55% to the group revenue, according to a media report. The exercise, in the early stages, will involve separating the electric vehicle, tractor and passenger vehicle (PV) businesses into three independent companies via a demerger process.
Banks: ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Bank of India have raised interest rates on new loans by 40 basis points, a day after the Reserve Bank of India raised its repo rate by a similar quantum, citing inflationary pressure.
Wipro: The IT major and HFCL Ltd., a telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider, have entered into a partnership to engineer a variety of 5G transport products.
ACC Ltd. and Ambuja Cements: Billionaire Gautam Adani is in talks with investment groups and funds from the Middle East, for financing support of up to $2 billion for acquisition of ACC and Ambuja, Holcim’s twin cement assets in India.
Tata Power Company: Tata Power Solar Systems, a subsidiary of Tata Power, said it has won India’s largest solar engineering procurement and construction order for 1 GW project worth ₹5,500 crore from state-owned SJVN Ltd. Tata Power will also announce its March quarter results today.
Delhivery, the SoftBank-backed logistics unicorn, plans to raise ₹5,235 crore next week through an initial public offering, a sign of IPO activity picking up after companies put the brakes on their plans to avoid a clash with Life Insurance Corp. of India’s mega-IPO and choppy markets.
The Delhivery IPO will open for subscription on 11 May. The price band has been set at ₹462-487 per share, valuing the company at ₹35,283 crore at the upper end of the band.
Moving on to markets
Indian indices are likely to open lower on Friday, in line with global peers.
Asian shares fell, following overnight losses on Wall Street, as investors worried that aggressive rate hikes by central banks to check inflation could hurt growth
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, dropped the most in almost a month after the Bank of England flagged a possible recession and double-digit inflation.
The largest digital currency fell as much as 8.4% to $36,639, the biggest intraday drop since 11 April. It had gained 5.3% on Wednesday.
Business Term of the Day
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the branch of the Federal Reserve System (FRS) that determines the direction of monetary policy specifically by directing open market operations (OMOs). The committee is made up of 12 members: the seven members of the Board of Governors; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining 11 Reserve Bank presidents on a rotating basis. The 12 members of the FOMC meet eight times a year to discuss whether there should be any changes to near-term monetary policy
