The rupee fell to its lowest level in over two and a half years nearing its record low, tracking Asian peers on global dollar strength.

Traders said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was spotted selling dollars via state-owned banks around 68.61 rupee levels to rein in the currency's fall.

DLF, the country's largest real estate company, is aiming to increase its office and retail supply to 36-40 million sq ft in the next two to three years. Currently, its office and retail space covers around 31 mn sq ft, of which two mn is vacant.

It plans four mn sq ft of new office space in Gurgaon and Chennai in the next two to three years. It has also started evaluating projects in Pune and Hyderabad, to add another three mn sq ft. DLF's target is to increase rental revenues from Rs 2,400 crore now to Rs 3,000 crore by the end of the next financial year.

After information technology companies, banks are also now moving away from the bell-curve system of employee appraisal. Axis Bank, the country's third-largest private sector lender, has decided to follow a new method of assessment called Acelerate and ditch the old system from this financial year onwards.

We have been looking at our internal process and decided that without losing focus on meritocracy, productivity how can we look at a slightly more inclusive approach than say bell curve. We have changed our entire performance management system to look at capability that we will build and what that capability will deliver to us, said Rajesh K Dahiya, group executive, Axis Bank.

Tata Motors, Bharat Forge and General Dynamics have forged an alliance to bid for the $11 billion (Rs 78,000 crore) project of making combat infantry vehicles for the Indian Army under the Future Infantry Combat Vehicle (FICV) Programme. Responding to a query, Tata Motors said: We confirm partnering with Bharat Forge for local manufacturing of guns, ammunition and such other elements of fire power that form part of the FICV Programme.

With two of the front runners, Tata Motors and Bharat Forge, joining hands, the number of total bidders has come down to nine from 10. The alliance now stands higher chances of making it to the final three prototype manufacturers, bids for which were given on Monday, according to a senior Bharat Forge executive.

State Bank of India (SBI) launched an initiative on Tuesday to help strengthen business ties between Asia's third-largest economy and Japan, where investors eyeing Indian markets need support in navigating the country's notoriously complex bureaucracy.

SBI dedicated Japan desk offers wholesale and retail banking products like rupee funding for Japanese businesses and banks, as well as guidance on Indian companies and regulations.

Coal India's bid to cut-down its expenses on wages and rationalise its manpower structure while pursuing the ministerial directive to produce 908.1 million tonne (mt) of coal by 2020 has resulted in the company resorting to massive outsourcing of labourers.

During April-December 2015, the state-owned coal behemoth had paid Rs. 22,069.67 crore to its 3,26,000 direct employees while Rs. 3,853.04 crore was spent on wages to an estimated 2,90,000 labourers and other staff who are under the pay-roll of contractors.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday described the meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the Budget session as 'successful' and said that the government would accommodate all the suggestions put forth by the opposition parties in the Parliament.

Naidu said the leaders of various political parties, who attended the meeting, spoke from the bottom of their heart.

IBM introduced a new open source development tool today called Quarks, which is supposed to help manufacturers and programmers develop efficient applications based on Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data.

Quarks is actually based on the IBM Streams product, a proprietary enterprise tool for processing large amounts of live data, but it’s been designed from the ground up to offer programmers and manufacturers an open source tool for building applications on top of connected devices. The idea is to provide a way for them to take advantage of live data coming off the devices in a simple, efficient way.

New Delhi, Feb. 15: ONGC Ltd has decided to prune its expenses because of the slump in global crude prices. The PSU has appointed global consultant McKinsey to advise it on cutting costs.

However, ONGC is unlikely to cut its capital expenditure as the state-owned firm wants to take advantage of the lower rates of services and rig rates to carry out exploration and production activity, officials said.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is in talks with the government to widen its jurisdiction over collective investment schemes (CIS), two persons familiar with the development said.

The capital markets regulator wants to be empowered to regulate all such schemes irrespective of the size of the corpus.

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