Two train accidents in five days had a fallout on Wednesday with railways minister Suresh Prabhu indicating he had offered to quit and Railway Board Chairman AK Mital resigning with Air India chief Ashwani Lohani, a railway engineer, named as his successor.

Hours after the second derailment on Wednesday, Prabhu, 64, said he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking "full moral responsibility" for the back-to-back accidents that triggered calls for his resignation from the Congress. Prabhu said the prime minister had asked him to "wait", suggesting he had offered to quit.

Public lender Bank of India has reduced interest rate on savings bank accounts by 50 basis points to 3.5 per cent on deposits of up to Rs 50 lakh.

However, the bank will continue to pay 4 per cent interest on deposits of above Rs 50 lakh.

Reliance Industries Ltd's (RIL’s) first-of-its-kind ethane import project is expected to add $300 million to the operating profit of the petrochemicals business, Vipul Shah, chief operating officer of petrochemicals, told reporters in a media briefing on Wednesday.

To secure feedstock for its three cracker facilities at Dahej, Nagothane and Hazira, RIL invested about $1.6 billion to import ethane from the US to use as feedstock and produce ethylene at these facilities.

After months of negotiation, India’s largest real estate firm, DLF, is likely to announce its 40 per cent stake sale of DLF Cyber City Developers (DCCDL), for Rs 13,000 crore, to an affiliate of Singapore’s GIC in its next board meeting on August 25.

The sale would bring some relief to DLF, which reported a decline of 58 per cent in its consolidated net profit at Rs 109.01 crore for the quarter ended June.

The Modi government, true to its intentions of divesting Air India, has put apartments owned by the airline across Mumbai on the block. These apartments, most of which are concentrated in upmarket South Mumbai, are expected to fetch Air India a minimum of Rs 305 crore. According to the company’s auction documents, the minimum price (called the reserve price from which bidding shall start), range from above Rs 10 crore to a little under Rs 1 crore.

While the bids for some these properties need to be submitted on or before August 31, bids for others can be submitted a day later on September 1, 2017. Cushman and Wakefield has been appointed as the advisors for the sale of these properties.

Walmart and Google are today announcing a new partnership that will enable voice shopping through Google Assistant, Google’s virtual assistant that lives on devices like its smart speaker, Google Home. Specifically, consumers will now be able to take advantage of Walmart’s “Easy Reorder” feature through an integration with Google’s shopping service, Google Express. This will allow consumers to shop from hundreds of thousands of Walmart products just by speaking, the companies explain.

Related to this, Google Express is also today ditching its membership fees, and now promises free delivery across its retailers in one to three days, as long as customer orders are above each store’s minimums.

After a game of patience, GMR Infrastructure Ltd’s sustained focus on airports is slowly paying off. Return on investments in airports’ development and maintenance is improving, as regulations are being eased and traffic at key airports is rising.

On Tuesday, the company detailed its expansion plans for its prized asset, Delhi International Airport (Pvt.) Ltd (DIAL), where it leads the consortium. A 60% increase in capacity for passenger traffic and increase in cargo handling infrastructure, besides world-class facilities, will be done in three phases over a decade. Although this would imply cost increases in the near term, it would gradually ramp-up revenue and profit. In fact, June quarter passenger traffic at Delhi airport grew by 14%.

New Delhi: The government is close to finalizing a proposal to grant licences in perpetuity to pharmaceutical companies, scrapping the existing policy that required renewal of licences every five years.

Aimed at enhancing the ease of doing business in India, the government has proposed that manufacturers be granted licences that will remain valid as long as they comply with good manufacturing practices (GMP).

The BSE Sensex firmed up by another 149 points and the Nifty reclaimed the 9,800—mark in opening trade on Wednesday, aided by fresh buying mainly in realty, healthcare and banks, coupled with positive global cues.

The 30—share index moved higher by 149.01 points, or 0.47 %, to 31,440.86. The gauge had gained 33 points in yesterday’s session.

State Bank chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya today called for more consolidation among the public sector banks, saying this could reduce their dependence on government for capital. The statement comes after SBI merged all its five subsidiaries and Bharatiya Mahila Bank, which resulted in a massive spike in its provisions and bad loans ratio that touched double digits in the first consolidated results announced earlier this month, though this led to the creation of the 45th largest bank in the world.

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