Peer-to-peer lending (P2P) platforms will be treated as non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and thus regulated by the RBI, the central bank said in a notification. P2P lending is a form of crowd-funding used to raise loans which are paid back with interest. It can be defined as the use of an online platform that matches lenders with borrowers in order to provide unsecured loans. “The Reserve Bank of India…specifies a non-banking institution that carries on ‘the business of a peer to peer lending platform’ to be an NBFC,” the notification said.

The rate cut by India’s telecom regulator TRAI has led global research and brokerage firms such as CLSA, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America cheering for Reliance Industries, even as the stock trades at all-time high levels. Reliance Industries enjoys the status of being India’s most valued company as the conglomerate commands a market capitalisation greater than Rs 5,54,000 crore, nearly Rs 75,000 crore more than India’s second in command TCS.

Shares of the state-run oil marketing companies IOC, BPCL and HPCL dived up to 2.8% after Moody’s Investors Service said that the state-owned fuel retailers have to increase borrowings. IOC, BPCL, and HPCL will have to go in for increased borrowings to sustain high dividend payments and capital spending this fiscal, keeping their credit metrics weak, Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday.

The benchmark BSE Sensex rebounded by over 93 points in early trade on gains in bluechips such as RIL, L&T and ITC amid a rising trend in Asia.

The 30-share index was trading higher by 93.02 points at 32,495.39. Sectoral indices led by capital goods, power,consumer durables, realty, metal, healthcare and oil & gas were trading in the positive terrain by gaining up to 0.95 per cent.

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 September 30 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 September 30.

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) was up by 1.5% to Rs 1,244 on BSE after the company announced that it has won contract valued around Rs 1,700 crore to build crude oil pipeline from Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Kuwait.

“L&T’s hydrocarbon division has bagged a major pipeline contract with a value close to Rs 1,700 crore from Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) for engineering , procurement and construction of new 48” crude transit line (TL-5) from North Kuwait to Ahmadi,” the company said in a press release.

The latest discovery of India's largest oil explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp to the west of its Mumbai High offshore fields is estimated to hold in-place reserves of about 20 million tonnes, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The Mumbai High field annually produces oil and natural gas of about 9 million to 10 million tonnes of oil equivalent. The company discovered hydrocarbon reserves west of Mumbai High at well WO 24-3 in July.

New Delhi: State-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) will go in for increased borrowings to sustain high dividend payments and capital spending this fiscal, keeping their credit metrics weak, Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday.

The rating agency expected dividend payments by the three companies to drop modestly in 2017-18, but remain higher than in 2015-16. The government expects to receive Rs67,500 crore of dividends from all state-owned companies in 2017-18, less than Rs77,000 crore estimated to have been received in 2016-17, but more than double than Rs30,800 crore in 2015-16.

The BSE Sensex turned flat paring initial gains, easing 16.36 points at 32,407.40 following mild bouts of profit-booking in capital goods, power, energy and financials sectors amid lower Asian trend.

Broader Nifty was trading below the 10,150-level.

Noting that the economy has been on a downslide since September 2016, SBI Research today said the slowdown is real and not technical and called for more public spending to arrest the slide. “We certainly believe that we are in a slowdown mode since September 2016 and a slowdown that has been prolonged to Q1 of this fiscal year is technically not short-term in nature or even transient,” SBI Research said in a report. The report said continuing slowdown has “raised the specter of whether the slowdown is temporary or not” but stopped short of answering the question.

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