Even as long serpentine queues were witnessed at bank branches for the third straight day across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday termed the demonetisation as "Swachhata Abhiyan" and hailed the undaunting spirit of people despite their hardship following its announcement on November 8.

Addressing Indian community in Japan's Kobe before departing for India, PM Modi said, "I salute each and every Indian. Many families had weddings, health problems, they faced inconvenience but they accepted the decision."

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has expressed reservations about the merger structure in the proposed merger of Max Life Insurance with HDFC Life Insurance.

In a notification to the stock exchanges, Max India on Saturday said that IRDAI has expressed reservations to accept the scheme of amalgamation in its current form.

The penalty imposed on Reliance Industries Ltd for producing Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s share of natural gas has come with an interest rate of 2% over Libor. This has taken the net payable amount to $1.55 billion.

Besides this, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas is seeking $175 million from RIL as additional cumulative profit till March 31, 2016. While giving RIL 30 days to pay up, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas has threatened “further actions” for breach of the provisions and obligations committed under the production sharing contract between the contractors and the government.

State-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL)’s net profit grew 26% for the July-September 2016 quarter on the back of a higher other income Rs 1022.34 crore.

For the July-September 2016 ended quarter, the company reported a net profit of Rs 1305.18 crore, 26% higher than Rs 1034.52 crore in the same period a year back.

Homegrown auto major Mahindra & Mahindra today reported a 27 per cent jump in its standalone net profit to Rs 1,163.27 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2016.The company had posted standalone net profit of Rs 915.38 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, M&M said in a BSE filing.

The firm’s total standalone revenue from operations stood at Rs 11,363.63 crore during the period under review as against Rs 9,834.41 crore in the year-ago quarter, up 15.56 per cent.Unit volume sales during the quarter stood at 1,14,795, up 11.6 per cent. Utility vehicles sales were at 52,287 units, up 15.6 per cent from the year-ago period.

Healthcare major Apollo Hospitals on Friday reported a 2.72 per cent rise in standalone net profit to Rs 91.99 crore for the quarter ended September 30, mainly on account of robust sales.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 89.55 crore for the corresponding period of the previous financial year, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise said in a filing to BSE.

Taking a cue from Tata Consultancy Services and Indian Hotels Company Ltd, Tata Motors has convened an extra ordinary general meeting of shareholders to sack its chairman Cyrus Mistry and one of its senior independent directors, Nusli Wadia.

In a notice to the stock exchanges, Tata Motors said it has received a notice from Tata Sons, with 26.51% stake for convening an Extraordinary General Meeting of the company for considering and passing resolutions for the removal of Cyrus P Mistry and Nusli N Wadia, directors of the company under Section 169 of the Companies Act.

MUMBAI: Rupee crashed by 52 paise to breach the 67-level and traded at 67.15 against the US dollar in early trade on Friday at the Interbank Foreign Exchange market after the American currency soared overseas.

Besides, foreign fund outflows and strong demand from importers, a lower opening of the domestic equity markets also weighed on the rupee, forex dealers said.

While ATMs will be operational from Friday, it will take another 10 days for the situation to normalise, since there are close to two lakh ATMs and only three to four vendors to reconfigure them, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said on Thursday.

According to Bhattacharya, some of the ATMs are configured to dispense only R100 notes, and they will need to be re-configured to dispense other denominations as well. “There are many ATMs with only R100 configuration and they have to be reconfigured, it was done in the recent past.”

ICICI Bank has seen a 70% rise in footfalls in its branches across the country as people stood in long queues to deposit and exchange old currency notes, managing director & CEO Chanda Kochhar told a business news channel on Thursday. As on September, it has 4,468 branches and 14,295 ATMs.

Kochhar said some of the ICICI Bank branches opened at 8 am. while the rest began operations at 9 am. “We had started moving currency from yesterday early morning, the currency moved throughout the night. So, we have stocked up the branches well,” she said, adding that the bank has trained employees, created extra cash counters and added some extra facilities for senior citizens.

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