MUMBAI: Continuing its downward trend, the benchmark BSE Sensex fell almost 74 points in early trade on Thursday as investors engaged in profit-booking in recent gainers amid weak Asian cues.

Market sentiment was also influenced by investors treading cautiously ahead of June IIP and retail inflation data for July to be released on Friday.

The government has assured Air India of financial and other assistance urging the carrier to meet the targets spelt out in the new turnaround plan. The state-owned airline must improve on time performance (OTP), passenger load factor (PLF), capacity growth and monetise assets.

Air India chairman and managing director Aswani Lohani is understood to have asked the government to waive the guarantee fee charged to secure the airline’s loans and bonds.

KOLKATA: Coal India plans to put in place a massive health database and cashless hospitalisation system for its 6.5lakh employees and former employees.

It will help the company manage its medical benefit system better. Individuals would be handed over smart cards that will carry their health history as well as their balance medical benefit entitlement, which when presented at hospitals will act as cashless card and allow doctors to access their past medical history.

Wipro Chairman Azim Premji and HCL co-founder Shiv Nadar are the only two billionaires from India in Forbes' list of the world's 100 richest people in technology, ranking in the top 20 ahead of Google boss Eric Schmidt and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

The '100 Richest Tech Billionaires In The World 2016' list has been topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with an estimated fortune of USD 78 billion.

Bank of Baroda dipped nearly 8% to Rs 148 on the BSE in early morning trade after the bank’s gross net performing assets (NPA) as a percentage of total loans rose to 11.15% at the end of the June 2016 quarter as compared to 9.99% in the March quarter and 4.13% in the June 2015 quarter.

Net NPAs were at 5.73% in the June quarter compared to 5.06% in the previous quarter and 2.07% in the year-ago quarter.

Mumbai: The government has asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to ban sugar futures trading as it does not want a few traders and speculators setting prices in a year when there is likely to be a shortfall of the commodity.

According to three people familiar with the development, the government is concerned that futures market aren’t setting the correct price signals.

Tata Motors chairman Cyrus Mistry on Tuesday told the company’s shareholders’ that they should not be disappointed with the low dividend the company is paying them for FY16, but should see the development that operationally things are improving for the company. Mistry was addressing the company’s 71st annual general meeting.

American conglomerate GE today said it has signed a pact with engineering firm Larsen & Toubro to manufacture subsea equipment for future deep water projects in Krishna-Godavari basin on the eastern coast of India.

“Contributing to India’s exploration and production (E&P) activities in the oil and gas sector, GE has signed an exclusive MoU with L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering, a wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T,” the company said in a statement.

The telecom major reported a decline of 74% y-o-y in its net profit at Rs 217 crore in the June quarter. During the quarter, revenues grew by around 8% and total expenditure grew by 15% at R9,486.6 crore and R8,331.5 crore, respectively.

The BSE Telecom Index ended Tuesday’s trading session at 1278.59, down 1.15% or 14.85 points. Shares of Tata Communications and Reliance Communication declined between 2% and 3%. Shares of Bharti Airtel were down by 0.87% to close at Rs 348.85.

NEW DELHI: In a first, Maruti Suzuki will start transporting its cars through National Waterways-1 (on River Ganga) from Varanasi to Kolkata. Cars are proposed to be transported from Varanasi to Kolkata on NW-1as a pilot run which is scheduled for Friday.

The requirement of logistic support for rolling in and out of cars from the vessels to shore and vice-versa has been done in a trial run at Kolkata.

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