Later this week, finance minister Arun Jaitley will present his fifth Union budget, the last full budget in this tenure of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It will be keenly watched on both sides of the aisle in Parliament, by investors, both domestic and foreign, various interest groups like farmers and the burgeoning middle-class and of course by the armchair analyst.

Mumbai: India’s largest engineering and construction company Larsen and Toubro Ltd on Thursday crossed Rs2 trillion market cap for the first time after its shares soared over 13% so far this year.

The stock touched a high of Rs1,430.60 a share and gained as much as 1.25% in intraday trade. Currently, its market cap stands at Rs2.01 trillion. At 9.35am, its shares were trading at Rs1,429.50 apiece on the BSE, up 1.17% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index rose 0.49% to 36,228.72 points.

India’s market regulator is likely to tighten net worth norms, introduce new shareholding rules and ease directorship conditions for stock exchanges, depositories and clearing corporations, according to three people aware of the matter.

A five-member panel headed by R. Gandhi, a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is considering these proposals.

The rupee was trading flat at 63.55 against the US dollar in early session today at the interbank foreign exchange market amid the greenback’s gains in overseas markets.

Forex dealers said month-end dollar demand from banks and importers and the dollar’s gain against other currencies overseas weighed on the rupee in early session but forex inflows in stocks cushioned the fall.

With the government taking quick steps for divesting its stake in Air India, Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey says that a foreign player has expressed interest in acquiring 49% stake in the state-run carrier. According to a report in the Times of India, Aviation secretary R N Choubey said that the foreign player has shown an “unsolicited expression of interest for AI’s airline arm.”

Key indices Sensex and Nifty touch all-time high ahead of the Economic Survey which will be presented on first day of the Budget Session of the Parliament, which is scheduled to be start on January 29.

At 9:27 AM, BSE Sensex was up by 200 points to trade at 36,290.39 while Nifty was trading at 11,130.75.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are losing billions of dollars in productivity due to cancer, according to a research paper published in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology. India ranks second in such losses.

The emerging economies collectively lost nearly $46.3 billion in 2012 on account of cancer-related deaths that could have been prevented with proper treatment and adequate infrastructure, said the paper.

As a large number of Indian HNIs and their representatives went around Swiss ski resort town of Davos for attending the annual WEF summit last week, they also got several pitches on the margins for two new 'safe and promising havens' -- cryptocurrencies and cash vaults.

Cash vaults, which are huge in size unlike the typical bank lockers in India and can contain not just cash but also gold, data, paintings and sculptures, are big business in Switzerland and are not just limited to banks, with several stand-alone entities offering these services.

DLF, the country’s largest developer by market value, is looking to launch its qualified institutional placement (QIP) of shares by April this year, a source said.

DLF has already received approval from shareholders to sell 173-million equity shares, which will be determined by the formula laid down by the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India.

Listeners can now tune into All India Radio (AIR) by giving a voice command from anywhere in the world, thanks to a recent partnership between the public broadcaster and Amazon Echo service. With the latest move, AIR looks at expanding its reach with the help of new age technology. In order to avail the ‘voice on demand’ service, the listeners need to buy ‘Echo’ device from the e-commerce platform of Amazon. “Now, people across the world can access local and global services of AIR through a voice command on Amazon Echo,” AIR Director General F Sheheryar said.

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