MUMBAI: Stock markets opened on a subdued note on the first trading day of 2017, with the benchmark BSE Sensex falling over 132 points in early trade on profit-booking after recent gains.

The 30-share index, which had gained 415.78 points in the previous two sessions, fell 132.37 points, or 0.50 per cent, to 26,494.09 in early trade on Monday.

Due to poor retail sales in November as a result of demonetisation and a significant increase in dealer inventory, car makers in the domestic market did not push much stock in December. Traditionally, the last month of the year was known to be the best time to buy vehicles since manufacturers want to push cars into the market to get rid of the inventory and dealers also offer significant discounts to draw customers.

The prices of petrol and diesel have been increased by Rs. 1.29 and Rs. 0.97 per litre with effect from midnight.

After the hike, petrol in New Delhi costs Rs. 67.39 per litre and diesel costs Rs. 55.94.

Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors said on Monday they aim to increase their combined sales to 8.25 million vehicles globally in 2017, despite rising competition.

The 2017 target is slightly higher than their 2016 goal of 8.13 million vehicles. The South Korean automakers' final sales figures for 2016 are due out later on Monday, with analysts expecting a miss due to weak demand in emerging markets.

Bajaj Auto today reported a 22 per cent decline in total sales in December at 2,25,529 units as against 2,89,003units during the same month a year ago.

Motorcycle sales during the month decreased by 18 per cent to 2,03,312 units from 2,47,782 units in the same month in 2015, the company said in a regulatory filing.

IT major Infosys’ Rs. 5.9 crore ($868,250) severance pay offer to outgoing General Counsel David D Kennedy is a move to play safe with Donald Trump administration in the US, say experts.

Even though Infosys cited "normal payroll practices" as a reason to this compensation to Kennedy, experts say technically none of the company’s employees are eligible for a severance pay, except for chief executive Vishal Sikka.

The country’s largest bank State Bank of India (SBI) announced a steep interest rate cut in several years on Sunday, by reducing its marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 90 basis points (bps) across all maturities.

With this cut, SBI has passed on benefit of 200 bps since January 2015 to customers, which is more than 175 bps reduction in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) policy rate cut in the same period.

Patanjali Ayurveda, steered by Baba Ramdev has turned out to be the most disruptive force in India’s fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) market which is expected to reach the USD billion mark by 2020, according to an ASSOCHAM– TechSci Research paper.

Patanjali which has expanded its product portfolio across wide range of personal care and food and beverages witnessed a whopping annual growth of 146 per cent in fiscal 2016 grossing in turnover of USD 769 million whereas its peers including ITC, Dabur, Hindustan Unilever, Colgate – Palmolive and Procter and Gamble, among others, struggled to get a growth much less than a double digit.

State-run Bank of Baroda today said it has launched an agricultural investment credit for the farmers of Rajasthan.

The first loan has been disbursed in Sri Ganganagar, the bank said in a statement here today.

Mumbai: State-owned lender IDBI Bank Ltd said that it has reduced marginal cost based lending rate (MCLR) by 30-60 basis points (bps) across various loan tenors, with effect from 1 January.

MCLR is the benchmark lending rate at which banks price all their loans. The six month MCLR has been cut to 8.95% as compared with 9.25% earlier, while three year MCLR has been reduced to 9.3%, as against 9.7% previously, the bank said in a statement on Friday.

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