Government-owned National Insurance has postponed its initial public offering (IPO) of equity to the next financial year (beginning April 1).

Earlier, its offer was expected by March 2018. “The government is more occupied with Budget preparations,” K Sanath Kumar, chairman, told Business Standard.

State Bank of India plans to raise capital worth Rs 8,000 crore through additional tier-I bonds (AT1 bonds) by March 2018.

The board of directors of the country’s largest lender has given a nod to raise additional tier-I capital (AT1) of Rs 8,000 crore through Basel-III-compliant debt instruments, SBI informed the BSE.

The Reserve Bank of India is expected to go in for a policy rate cut of 25 bps in April next year to signal lower lending rates, which are key to the economic recovery, says a report. According to global financial services major Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML), inflation risks are “overdone” and though CPI inflation is likely to be 5.2 per cent in December 2017, it would cool down to around 4.5 per cent in the first half of 2018. Moreover, the Australian weather bureau is predicting La Nina — which gives a boost to the South-West Monsoon — next year, which in turn would contain inflationary pressures.

Sectoral regulator Irdai has issued regulations for insurance firms to carry out offshore business from Gujarat-based GIFT International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). Insurance operations will get a major boost with Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) issuing enabling regulations for undertaking offshore insurance business from IFSC, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) IFSC said in a statement today.

The resilient Indian IT industry, which has been going through challenging times on multiple fronts, faced disruption in 2017 from increasing automation and the boardroom spat in software major Infosys spilling into the public domain. Though the $150-billion (almost Rs 10 trillion) software sector reconciled to single digit export growth of 7-8 per cent for the 2017-18 fiscal, demand for more automation and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the services had put the vendors under pressure to hone the skills of their techies in the thousands and invest in new technologies to deliver on time for global enterprises.

Alibaba backed mobile financial services platform Paytm on Wednesday announced that its app has crossed the 100 million milestone on Google Play Store in the second week of December 2017. This makes Paytm the country’s first payment app to cross the 100 million downloads mark.

The State Bank of India has asked its customers to stop using cheque books of its 6 subsidiary banks as they would be invalid from December 31 onwards.

The country's biggest public lender has asked the account holders of State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Raipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Hyderabad and Bhartiya Mahila Bank to submit the application to change the cheque book and said that Old cheque books and IFSC codes will be invalid after December 31.

Activist investor Cevian Capital has agreed to sell its 8.2 per cent stake in Swedish truck maker AB Volvo to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Cevian and Geely announced in a joint statement on Wednesday.

They did not disclose the value of the transaction, which makes Geely Volvo's largest owner by capital and the second biggest by voting rights after investment firm Industrivarden.

MUMBAI: A late surge in the last half an hour of Tuesday's session took the sensex to a record closing high — above the 34,000 mark, helped by a sudden spurt in Reliance and Bharti Airtel stocks.

After opening at 34,005, the sensex mostly remained in a narrow zone before racing past the psychologically important mark to close 70 points higher at 34,011.

Coal India Ltd (CIL)’s profitability should benefit from a rise in coal earnings. Last week, it introduced evacuation facility charges of Rs50 per tonne on all coal despatches (except despatches through rapid-loading arrangement) with immediate effect. This is expected to generate incremental annual revenue of Rs2,500 crore, adding Rs800 crore to revenue in the current fiscal alone.

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