Agriculture-commodities bourse NCDEX today said it has sought regulator SEBI’s nod to relaunch futures trading in pulses, especially chana, tur and urad. Tur (pigeon peas) and urad (black gram) were banned in 2007, while chana (gram) was suspended last year after prices soared, leading to a rise in inflation. “Farmers are seriously asking for pulses futures as (wholesale) prices have crashed below the MSP in some parts.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday filed a charge sheet against Jindal Steel's advisor Anand Goel, Gurgaon-based Green Infra's vice-president Siddharth Madra, Mumbai-based KE International's Chief Financial Officer Rajeev Aggarwal, Nihar Stocks Limited Director BSN Suryanarayan and Mumbai's Essar Power Limited Executive vice chairman Sushil Kumar Maroo.

MUMBAI: Stock markets opened higher on Friday with the benchmark BSE Sensex advancing by 113 points in early trade on continued buying by investors in banking and FMCG stocks.

The 50-share Nifty of National Stock Exchange also regained 9,100 level by rising 32.80 points to 9,119.10 with 30 of index constituents making advances.

Tata Motors will raise up to Rs 500 crore via issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on a private placement basis.

“A meeting of duly authorised committee was held today approving offering for subscription on a private placement basis, up to 5,000 rated, listed, unsecured, 7.84 per cent coupon, redeemable, non-convertible debentures aggregating up to Rs 500 crore,” Tata Motors said in a BSE filing.

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.

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