In order to assess concerns ahead of its divestment program, Air India, the flag-carrier airline of the country, on Wednesday formed an internal panel. The Director (Finance and Personnel) of the government-run airline will be a part of the panel, CNBC-TV18 reported citing unidentified sources. Air India panel will likely consider Voluntary Retirement Scheme for employees above 55 years. Air India has over 20,000 employees on payrol. Meanwhile, Civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju today said the government wants to make Air India vibrant for which plans on an ‘alternative mechanism’ was being worked out.

Indian oil refiners are drawing up plans to use petroleum coke for power generation and to produce syngas after the government banned use of the heavily polluting fuel in and around New Delhi.

The country's top refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and other refiners have invested billions of dollars in recent years to install delayed coker units to produce high-valued added products such as gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas.

Intel’s stumbles in the mobile arena grew to become Qualcomm’s gains with its Snapdragon platform, but now it appears that Qualcomm intends to upend their dominance in entry-level PCs as well. Today, Microsoft and Qualcomm announced that Windows would begin running on systems powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile chipsets.

This isn’t entirely earth-shattering given that these are mobile chipsets running on what are still just laptop convertible 2-in-1s or tablets, but the fact that Windows 10 — albeit a more lightweight “Windows 10 S” — can run on Qualcomm 835 chips should still worry Intel quite a bit.

Reaction to the International Olympic Committee’s decision on Tuesday to ban Russia from next year’s Pyeongchang Winter Games:

World Anti-Doping Agency President Craig Reedie said in a statement: “WADA believes that the IOC has taken an informed decision to sanction Russia for its involvement in institutionalised manipulation of the doping control process before, during and after the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games.”

State-owned Life Insurance Corp of India (LIC) will likely slow stock purchases for the rest of the fiscal year after nearly doubling its equity market investments in the first half from a year earlier. LIC, with assets of 27.26 trillion rupees ($423.3 billion) as of end-September, had a target of investing 500 billion rupees in stocks through the year which ends in March. During the first six months of that period, LIC’s stock market investments more than doubled from a year earlier to 392.24 billion rupees. As of end-November it had bought equities worth about 440 billion rupees, top executives said. They added they would look at opportunities to take some profit off the table.

Export-oriented auto manufacturers like Ford India, Nissan and Volkswagen are suffering as the current goods and services tax (GST) system of making payments upfront and claiming input tax credit is not working properly. According to industry estimates the stuck amount is around Rs 1,000 crore as these manufacturers have not been able to file claims since July. Industry executives explained that for export-oriented auto firms, there are two mechanisms to expunge tax content in exports.

KOLKATA: The Idea-Vodafone merger is likely to close faster, as early as next March-April, six months before the more conservative September 2018 timeline recently suggested by Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao.

“Management expects all approvals for the merger to come in by March/April 2018,” Bank of America-Merrill Lynch said in a note, citing its recent meeting with the Idea Cellular leadership. ET has seen a copy of this note.

BSE benchmark Sensex ended over 67 points down in volatile trade today as cautious investors trimmed their portfolios ahead of RBI's policy announcement amid subdued macro cues.

The Reserve Bank's two-day monetary policy review kicked off today. The central bank is widely expected to keep policy rates unchanged tomorrow and will stay focused on controlling inflation, experts said.

The Indian government’s fraud case against tycoon Vijay Mallya is baseless and politically motivated, his defence lawyer told a London court on Tuesday as she battled to prevent his extradition to his home country.

Mallya, who lives in Britain, stands accused in India of fraudulently palming off losses from his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines onto banks by taking out loans he had no intention of repaying.

Two major Chinese lenders plan to support a move by China Development Bank to put Indian wireless carrier Reliance Communications (RCom) into insolvency court as they seek to recover about $2 billion in debt, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

Last month, CDB began insolvency proceedings against RCom, which has been trying for months to restructure its debt via a debt-for-equity swap. Now, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country's biggest-listed lender by assets, and Export-Import Bank of China, plan to back CDB, the sources said.

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