Microsoft Corp topped Wall Street forecasts for quarterly profit as it signed up more businesses to its Azure cloud computing services and Office 365 productivity suite.

Much of Microsoft’s recent growth has been fueled by its cloud computing business as more enterprises seek to cut data storage costs by adopting cloud-based software and moving their applications to data centers.

NEW DELHI: Ford Motor, which is setting up a new technology and development centre in Chennai, will leverage the base further to increase Indian R&D content in its vehicles as the US carmaker scales up the technical capabilities of engineers employed here.

In Chennai, Ford has already appointed 800-1,000 employees including engineers who have worked on Figo Sports and EcoSport Platinum editions.

The domestic equity and money markets opened in green on Friday morning tracking global cues. The BSE Sensex was trading over 120 points up at 34,835.42 in early trade, while the 50-share NSE Nifty index was up 44 points at 10,661.

Q4 earnings of YES bank led the gains, among the early gainers were Reliance, Indiabulls Housing Finance , Hindalcoand Asian Paints.

Essar Oil has said is was seeking approval to change its corporate identity to Nayara Energy. Essar Oil said the term coined from ‘naya’ (new) and ‘era’ strongly signifies its vision to succeed in the Indian and global energy markets. The adoption of the new name is subject to all requisite approvals, the company said. The majority stake in Essar Oil was acquired by Rosneft and a consortium led by Trafigura and UCP in August 2017.

Infosys has said it its largest campus outside of India is going to be in Indianapolis, US. The company is already aggressively expanding its capacity in US while stepping up hiring to localise the workforce.

The proposed campus, according to some local media reports, is expected to come up on around 125 acres, which the company will acquire from airport authorities, and would house as many as 3,000 employees. This, however, could not be independently verified.

Numetal has moved the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) challenging the NCLT order that pointed towards payment of overdue amount for ArcelorMittal to cure its ineligibility. Legal sources in Numetal said the NCLT order, which suggested a 30-day cure period for payment of overdues for ArcelorMittal, wasn't applicable. It was applicable to companies who had bid before the IBC amendment, but ArcelorMittal submitted its bid for Essar Steel after the amendment, they said.

Amazon is continuing to pepper India with its warehouses, announcing the opening of five new fulfillment centres, which will be ready in the next six months. This comes at a time when logistics and warehousing is becoming one of the most important investments for e-commerce companies in the country.

To be located in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Vijayawada and Kolkata, the five new centres will serve Amazon's core e-commerce business and will take the total number of warehouses of the company in the country to 67.

After postponing the introduction of the new Gross Calorific Value (GCV)-based billing mechanism for consumers, earlier scheduled for this month, Coal India is expected have the new system in place by July.

The government-owned behemoth was to have switched to charging of consumers on this globally adopted system from April 1. Issues related to sampling and the billing procedure forced a postponement by a fiscal quarter.

Private sector lender Axis Bank reported its first net loss, of Rs 21.8 billion, for the quarter ended March as non-performing assets (NPAs) soared and provisions for bad loans surged three times over the corresponding quarter last year.

The results were well below Street expectations on most key parameters, including profits.

State Bank of India (SBI) might integrate its broking business with SBI Capital Markets as part of restructuring the latter’s business. If this happens, SBI Caps will focus on investment banking (debt and equity) and broking, while the project advisory and structured finance divisions will be transferred to the parent company.

SBI began the process of restructuring SBI Caps after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) flagged the duplication of functions at the bank and its investment banking subsidiary.

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