India’s high-profile offer to sell a stake in Air India failed to attract a single bidder by the Thursday deadline, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target for offloading stakes in government-held firms. The no-show by buyers in a booming aviation market underlines the challenges the government faces in fixing the debt-laden national carrier, and was a setback for Modi’s credentials as a reformer willing to step away from running money-losing businesses.

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and its director-general Rajan S Mathews to refrain from making disparaging and defamatory statements against Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) Justice Yogesh Khanna, while issuing notice to Mathews, expressed doubt about the use of phrases like “back door operator”, “skullduggery”, “deep pockets and monopolistic designs” against Reliance Jio.

Volvo Car India has announced it will launch the new XC40 on July 4. The entry-luxury SUV, which will compete with BMW X1, Mercedes-Benz GLA and Audi Q3, gets the 2.0-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine that produces 190bhp of power and 400Nm of torque.

GMR Infrastructure’s auditors SR Batliboi & Associates have observed in the auditor’s report that the group has not accounted for an impairment loss of Rs 2,250 crore in the accompanying consolidated Ind AS financial results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2018. “In our opinion, the aforesaid accounting treatment is not in accordance with the relevant accounting standards.

Maruti Suzuki, which had forayed into the commercial vehicle segment with the launch of the Super Carry in September 2016 with a pilot in the three cities of Ludhiana, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, has announced it has reached the milestone of 200 outlets which are selling this vehicle in more than 165 cities.

Digital payments major Paytm today said it has crossed an annual gross transaction run-rate of USD 29 billion, driven by growth across mobile payments and bank transfers through its platform. A Paytm spokesperson said the company is witnessing strong growth in both mobile payments usage as well as transactions through bank transfers, which has been recently introduced. “We are already seeing a GTV (gross transaction value) run rate of USD 29 billion.

State Bank of India (SBI), one of the four large Indian banks with which Facebook-owned WhatsApp, has been working to launch a full-fledged payments service, will join the platform by August, according to sources. Earlier this week, Bloomberg had reported that the messaging app may launch its payments service next week with its other partners — HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank — without waiting for SBI to come on board.

The government may ask state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) to bear fuel subsidy to help cut petrol and diesel prices, sources said today. The government does not want to cut excise duty and is looking at alternative means to reduce petrol and diesel prices that had on Tuesday touched an all-time high of Rs 78.43 per litre and Rs 69.31 a litre respectively. Sources said the alternative in works is to ask ONGC give subsidy to fuel retailers so that they can sell petrol and diesel at below market rates.

Close on the heels of its merger with Vodafone India, Idea Cellular on Thursday announced the completion of the sale of its standalone 9,900 towers to the Indian unit of US-based tower firm American Tower Corporation (ATC) for Rs 4,000 crore.

Earlier, Vodafone had also sold off its tower business to ATC for an enterprise value of about Rs 3,850 crore.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ended the special dispensations granted earlier for non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs) owned by the government.

Instead, it has specified a roadmap, stretching till 2021-22, for these lenders to meet the norms on capital adequacy, provisioning and corporate governance.

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