State Bank of India (SBI), country’s largest lender, on Friday said the cost of funding to the gems and jewellery sector will remain high as long as the industry is seen risky in view of the recent fraud by diamantaire Nirav Modi’s firms.

SBI managing director Dinesh Kumar Khara, speaking at a seminar organised by Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) here, said as a lender it appreciates the initiatives taken by the council to mitigate concerns of the banks.

Shares of telecom companies fell on Friday, a day after Reliance Jio Infocomm launched a plan targeting post-paid users.

The S&P BSE Telecom index dropped 4.25 per cent, the most in seven months, even as the Sensex rose 0.82 per cent, or 289.52 points, to 35,535.79. Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest telecom operator, fell 6.4 per cent, while Idea Cellular plunged nearly 12 per cent, the most in a decade, on fears that Jio’s new plan will erode revenues and margins.

IT giant Infosys on Friday said that Ravi Venkatesan has resigned as a director of the company. “Champion for driving social impact”, Ravi Venkatesan has been an independent director since 2011 and served briefly as co-Chairman before Nandan Nilekani became the chairman in August 2017.

Employees of public sector banks have threatened to go on two-day nation-wide strike from May 30 against "a meagre" 2 per cent hike offered by the management body, Indian Banks' Association (IBA).

During the negotiations held on May 5, IBA made two unacceptable propositions including an offer of 2 per cent hike in the wage bill cost as on March 31, 2017, United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) said in a statement.

Tata Motors on Friday reported 38.81 percent rise in global sales, including that of Jaguar Land Rover, at 1,02,297 units in April.

The company had sold a total of 73,691 units in the same month last year.

San Francisco: Amazon.com Inc. has stopped buying a popular type of Google ad, according to people familiar with the decision. The move deepens the rift between the technology titans and signals Amazon’s growing ambition in the digital advertising market.

The pullback affects highly coveted real estate at the top of Google search results, where retailers and e-commerce bid and pay handsomely to place colourful, image-rich ads that show up when consumers look online for running shoes, headphones and other products to buy.

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.

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