Mumbai: Siemens Ltd, the Indian arm of global engineering giant Siemens AG, is keen on tapping the business opportunity created by stressed assets in the country’s banking system, a senior company executive said.

“These stressed assets are all opportunities that we are looking at. We are working together with banks, we are working together with the government, working with the private players to see how we can participate and make some of these stressed assets much more productive,” Sunil Mathur, managing director and chief executive of Siemens Ltd, told Mint.

The benchmark Sensex rose about 134 points in early trade on Friday as investors looked forward to release of key macroeconomic data amid positive global cues.

Optimistic buying in blue-chip stocks ahead of industrial production and inflation data, to be released after market hours, drove stocks higher, brokers said.

The rupee showed some strength to quote 21 paise higher at 67.11 against the dollar in early trade on Friday on fresh selling of the US currency by exporters and banks amidst higher opening in the domestic equity market.

Forex dealers said besides selling of the American currency by exporters and banks, weakness in the dollar against other currencies overseas after tepid inflation data supported the rupee.

With the Supreme Court making it clear that the government cannot insist that telecom companies undergoing merger and acquisition need to pay the one-time spectrum charge (OTSC) levied on them, the telecom department on Thursday said that the Bharti-Telenor deal will be approved in less than a month’s time and that the Idea-Vodafone merger will also be expedited so that it can be completed by June, the time frame set by the companies.

Walmart Flipkart deal: After the world’s largest retailer Walmart picked up a 77% stake in homegrown giant Flipkart, online czar Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm called it a perfect answer to those who were dismissive of Indian start-ups. Commenting on the humoungous valuation garnered by Flipkart in the deal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted, “This is 1 Lakh crore+, all cash deal ! vI call it, perfect answer to those who were dismissive of Indian startups in an open-for-all market.

Suzuki Motor Corp on Thursday said it would earmark record investment this year for research and development into technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) as it defends it dominance in its biggest market, India. Higher R&D costs and a stronger yen will push operating profit down 9.1 percent in the current financial year at Japan’s fourth-biggest automaker, offsetting record global vehicle sales.

Shares of Aditya Birla Group’s telecom company Idea Cellular crashed more than 8% to an 8-year low in the morning deals on Friday as telecom companies slump on the ‘Zero Touch’ post-paid plan by Mukesh Ambani’s telecom firm Reliance Jio Infocomm. Shares of major domestic telecom players such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications slipped considerably in the early deals on Friday.

After capturing prepaid telecom customers, Reliance Jio has set sights on the lucrative set of postpaid users with a Rs 199 per month plan. Postpaid subscribers spend more than five times of an average pre-paid customer. Numbers shared by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) show postpaid consumers constitute about 5 per cent of the market with an average spend of Rs 378 per month in 2017 against Rs 67.27 for prepaid users.

In March/April next year, HDFC Bank says it will start the process for deciding on a successor to Aditya Puri, its founding managing director and chief executive officer.

The successor will be announced by October 2019, a year prior to Puri stepping down from the charge in October 2020.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has asked the boards of the companies to split the post of chairman and managing director. The regulator has also asked them to have at least six independent directors, including a woman.

The changes need to be put in place in phases, the Sebi said, while setting a deadline of April 1, 2019 for the independent directors. The companies will have more time to split the CMD post, for which the deadline is April 1, 2020.

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