As part of the plan to become India’s biggest renewable energy producer, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) is looking at buying stake in government’s Miniratna company – SJVN Ltd.

SJVN is a joint venture of government of India and government of Himachal Pradesh to generate clean electricity through hydro and wind power projects. The central government holds 64.46% stake in the company, followed by 25.51% held by the government of Himachal Pradesh and the balance 10.03% by public.

The Union Cabinet’s decision on Wednesday to grant extension to production sharing contracts for 10 blocks will benefit Cairn India Ltd (CIL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Essar Oil, Focus Energy, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd (GSPC).

The contracts for these pre-NELP (New Exploration Licensing Policy) exploratory blocks will be extended for 10 years from the expiry of their contracts. The move, the government said, will help accelerate indigenous production of hydrocarbons from existing blocks and act as a progressive step towards achieving the target of 10 per cent reduction in import of crude oil by 2022.

YES Bank was up nearly 2% at Rs 1,544.75 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), after the private sector lender announced that its qualified institutional placement (QIP) offer has opened on Thursday. The stock is trading close to its record high of Rs 1,545.45 touched on March 16, 2017.

The floor price, as per the formula of capital market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has been fixed at Rs 1,498.95 per share. “The bank may at its discretion offer a discount of 5% on the floor price of QIP,” YES Bank said in the filing.

India's top software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will step up local hiring in the United States (US) and has no plans to cut investments there as it continues to expect robust growth from its biggest overseas market.

"In the last four or five years, we have been recruiting heavily in the US," Girish Ramachandran, head of Asia Pacific region of TCS, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia in China's Hainan province.

State-run power equipment maker BHEL today said it has commissioned a 250 MW unit at the upcoming Bongaigaon thermal power station in Assam. “BHEL is executing the main plant package contract for setting up three coal-fired units of 250 MW each at Bongaigaon TPS of NTPC. Significantly, this is the highest rating coal-based power plant in the North-East region,” BHEL said in a statement. The first unit of the power plant was commissioned earlier by BHEL and is presently operational, while the third and final unit is in advanced stage of commissioning, the statement said.

It appears that the investment case for mid-sized banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) is gaining more momentum. Leading foreign brokerage, Morgan Stanley, in a report captioned 'Downgrading the Large Banks; Prefer the Smaller Lenders', flagged off that earnings for the financial stocks may remain weak in FY18 and FY19.

"Return on equity for the sector will struggle and there will be very material divergence in growth of book value per share, which will continue to create divergent stock price performance," the report highlights. What’s interesting is that the investment downgrade undertaken by the brokerage on India’s three largest private banks follows a different rationale in each case.

State-run power giant NTPC has exceeded the target of generation capacity addition of 11,920 MW set for the 12th Plan (2012-17) by adding 12,840 MW.

NTPC Group's power generation capacity has increased to 49,943 MW so far in the plan period, which would end on March 31, 2017.

India's finance ministry has called bankers into a meeting on Friday to discuss setting up a new facility to absorb surplus cash in the banking system, according to a letter sent to all heads of lenders seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The finance ministry wants to discuss implementing a new framework called a “standing deposit facility” that would drain the surplus cash at a rate lower than the repo rate without the need for any collateral, the letter said.

In a miraculous escape for hundreds of passengers, an Air India wide body aircraft landed safely at London Heathrow airport after sufering from a bird-hit in its flight path between Ahmedabad and London.

The bird hit was severe enough to push back the aircraft's nose and damage the radar system. The onward flight to Newark has been cancelled and the aircraft has been grounded.

A new vaccine that is cheap to make and does not require refrigeration has shown promise in preventing rotavirus, a contagious and fatal disease that disproportionately strikes children in Africa, researchers have said.

A trial in Niger found that the new vaccine was almost 67%effective in preventing gastroenteritis caused by rotavirus, which is the most common cause of severe diarrheal disease in the world.

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