NEW DELHI: Air India, India's flagship carrier, may get a sepcial mention in Union Budget 2018.

The Economic Survey released two days ago suggested that the government would do well to complete Air India's disinvestment in the next financial year.

Mumbai: The Indian rupee on Thursday weakened against US dollar ahead of the announcement of the Union budget for fiscal 2018-19.

The local currency opened at 63.70 a dollar. At 9.15am, the home currency was trading at 63.68, down 0.13% from its previous close of 63.59.

Mumbai: Suneet Weling, executive director at the investment banking division of Kotak Mahindra Bank, will join French banking group BNP Paribas’s Indian arm as managing director and head of advisory, capital markets and financing, said multiple people aware of the development.

Weling has advised several Indian and international companies on mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising in India during his seven-year stint at Kotak Mahindra.

The benchmark BSE Sensex regained the 36,000-mark by rebounding over 171 points in opening trade as investors built up positions ahead of the Union budget to be unveiled by the Finance Minister on Thursday.

The 30-share BSE index, which had lost 318.23 points in the previous two sessions, recovered 171.38 points, or 0.47 per cent, to 36,136.40.

Microsoft today reported a hefty loss in the past quarter, as it set aside billions of dollars for taxes on profits it expects to bring back to the United States following passage of a major tax overhaul.

The technology giant said its loss for the quarter to December 31 was USD 6.3 billion — as it took a charge of USD 13.8 billion to pay its taxes.

Private sector lender ICICI Bank on Wednesday reported a 32% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in its standalone net profit to Rs 1,650 crore for the December quarter of FY18, owing to higher provisions and lower other income. Its provisions for the quarter at Rs 3,570 crore were up 32% from the same period last year. Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO of the bank, said that the provisions will remain at an elevated level because the bank still has to make provisions for the next round of NCLT cases, and the ageing provisions will also continue.

Bitcoin is proving that cryptocurrencies can erase wealth as fast as they create it.

Its January slide knocked $44.2 billion off the $200 billion in market value generated in all of last year, the biggest one-month loss in dollar terms in the short history of digital assets.

Telecom services company Reliance Jio Infocomm, part of the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries, on Thursday clarified that the company had not launched any app for soliciting investments in the so-called JioCoin cryptocurrency.

“Reliance Jio has come across reports in media and other websites about the existence of purported JioCoin apps on the internet that are soliciting investments in cryptocurrencies from people,” the company said in a media release.

State-owned thermal power major NTPC recorded a fall of 4.4 per cent in its net profit to Rs 23.6 billion in the third quarter ended December 31. Total revenue rose to Rs 210 billion during Q3 compared to Rs 196.46 billion in the year-ago period.

The board of directors decided to pay interim dividend at the rate of 27.3 per cent (Rs 2.73 per share) on the face value of paid-up equity shares of Rs 10 each for 2017-18.

Telecom regulator Trai on Wednesday slashed the charges for mobile number portability by almost 79 per cent to a maximum of Rs 4.

The prescribed ceiling for mobile number portability rates was Rs 19, so far.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.