The fate of the country’s financially stressed telecom industry is hanging in a precarious balance. The Supreme Court is shortly going to conclude the hearings on a case which is going since 2006 relating to the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and pronounce its judgment. If the operators lose the case, they may have to shell out a massive Rs 92,000 crore as outstanding licence fee.

Q1FY20 was strong for ICICI Bank marked by significantly higher-than-expected PAT of Rs 19.1 billion (our estimate: Rs 16.7 billion) primarily on lower provisions (down 41.5% year-on-year). Key highlights of Q1: (a) domestic advances growth improved to 17.9% y-o-y — retail book (up 22.4%); (b) decline in BB and below rated pool to 2.6% of loans vs 3% in Q4FY19; and (c) headline asset quality improved with GNPA down 21 bps quarter-on-quarter at 6.5%.

Tata Motors chairman N Chandrasekaran on Tuesday said that the company is examining various options around its UK-arm Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR), which has been hit by volume slowdown and mounting losses, including meeting multiple private players and looking for partnerships in China to lessen the financial burden on the group’s bottom line.

Axis Bank’s net profit jumped 95% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 1,370.08 crore for the April-June period against Rs 701.09 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

The private lender witnessed a 13.1% y-o-y rise in net interest income (NII) at Rs 5,844 crore. NII is the difference between interest earned and interest paid by a bank. The private lender’s shares fell 2.58% intraday, before settling at Rs 706.55 per share, down 1.82%.

The government is working on a plan to merge state-run BSNL and MTNL as part of strategy to revive the ailing telecom companies. The Union Cabinet is expected to take a final call on the matter.

According to sources, the merger plan is one of the many components of the revival package, which also includes reducing retirement age from 60 to 58, asset monetisation and allocation of 4G spectrum.

Coming down heavily on the government for failing to put in place a non-intrusive indirect tax compliance IT system, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has slammed it for having a system which remains vulnerable to fraudulent Input Tax Credit (ITC) claims even after two years of the GST rollout.

“The complexity of return mechanism and the technical glitches resulted in the rollback of invoice-matching, rendering the system prone to ITC frauds.

Air India Express, a regional international arm of national carrier Air India, reported a 35.5% drop in net profit of Rs 169 crore for the fiscal ended March 31, 2019, as compared to Rs 262 crore during the previous year.

The low-cost carrier, which first started its operations in 2004, has been registering profits for four years since 2015-16, though its parent company Air India has been struggling to survive due to huge legacy and operational costs.

The body of Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha has been found from the Nethravathi river, according to TV reports on Wednesday.

Siddhartha's body was found on the banks of the river near the Hoige Bazaar in Mangaluru, according to news agency ANI.

With the Rajya Sabha passing the Bill on Tuesday evening, Parliament has approved a law to make instant triple talaq a criminal offence. Under the proposed law, which not only the opposition but two of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s allies opposed, offenders will get a three-year jail term.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned China against waiting out his first term to finalize any trade deal, saying if he wins re-election in the November 2020 US presidential contest, the outcome could be no agreement or a worse one.

"The problem with them waiting ... is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now...or no deal at all," Trump said in a post on Twitter, as the latest U.S-China trade talks began in Shanghai.

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