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.

Automaker Ford India today unveiled a new compact utility vehicle 'Freestyle' that will hit the market by April this year.

Powered by a brand new 1.2 litre 3 cylinder petrol engine and five-speed manual transmission, the new model can generate a power output of 96 PS.

Mahindra & Mahindra has set a target of manufacturing 3,000 electric vehicles a month over the next two years and will invest up Rs 600 crore in a new plant for such vehicles, a top company official said.

"Right now, we are rolling out 200 electric vehicles a month. We are going to rev up this capacity to 700-800 monthly over the next four months," M&M managing director Pawan Goenka told PTI here.

Tata Motors expects demand for trucks to remain strong for the next two years on back of the improving performance of the core sectors, pick up in infrastructure projects and implementation of BSVI emission norms in 2020 that is likely to prompt transporters to advance purchase, said Girish Wagh, head of truck and business at Tata Motors. Truck sales in India - a proxy for economic activity, have been on a rise in eight out of nine months of the current financial year.

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) on Wednesday said it has bought government's entire 51.11 per cent stake in oil refiner HPCL for Rs 369 billion.

In a regulatory filing, ONGC said it bought 778.8 million shares in Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) for Rs 473.97 per share.

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