Desperate to maintain its stranglehold on the domestic car market, Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest car manufacturer, has started the process of setting up regional offices that will oversee real estate purchases for its future dealerships.

The company plans to buy properties and rent it out to its dealers instead of the latter making heavy investment in buying showroom spaces. This way, Maruti believes, it can minimise migration of investments by dealers who have been looking at opportunities in other commercial areas such as supermarkets or malls.

The suspected data breaches by few BPO staffers of Wipro in Kolkata is likely to impact the Bengaluru-based company’s relationship with the client TalkTalk for whom these employees were working for. The Kolkata police last week had arrested three employees of Wipro who were handling British telecom firm TalkTalk’s back-office operations out of India, on charges of stealing of customers’ data.

The recent arrest could be linked to the data breach that TalkTalk went through in October last year when around 157,000 of its customer data including their bank account details were stolen. "Following the October 2015 cyber attack, we have been conducting a forensic review to ensure that all aspects of our security are as robust as possible - including that of our suppliers," said a statement by TalkTalk published in British public broadcaster, BBC.

Selecting from over 100 applications for the much-touted position of the chairman and managing director of NTPC, the country’s largest power generation company, the Cabinet's appointments committee approved Gurdeep Singh for the post.

Singh is currently the managing director of Gujarat State Electricity Company Limited (GESC). Having started his career in NTPC in 1987, Singh has a profile consisting of major names in the sector—both public and private companies. He was earlier associated with Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, Powergen and IDFC Projects in different capacities.

ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector lender, has reported net profit of only four per cent in the October-December quarter at Rs 3,018 crore on account of higher provisioning.

It is for the first time in the last 23 quarters that the lender has reported a net profit of only four per cent. Prior to this, the bank had been posting net profit of anywhere between 44-12 per cent.

Microsoft India today announced that it has extended the maternity leave for its women employees to six months from the current three months.

The new maternity policy will be effective from February 1, 2016 and also benefit all women employees who are currently on maternity leave.

MUMBAI: Top mortgage lender HDFC Ltd on Wednesday reported an 11 per cent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,419 crore for the December quarter, driven by an uptick in commercial lending and better performance by subsidiaries.

HDFC vice-chairman and chief executive Keki M Mistry attributed the lower rise in net to "lower profit on sale of investments at Rs 57 crore against Rs 113 crore, lower income from leased properties, other income and higher depreciation compared to the previous year."

Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd has bought a minority stake in Waterline Data Science Inc., a start-up based in Delaware, US, which helps companies make sense of large data sets, for $4 million.

Infosys investment allows it to have “a minority holding, not exceeding 20% of the outstanding share capital of the company” and it expects to close its investment by 4 February, the company said on Thursday.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed Sebi over its move to hear afresh the Financial Planning Supervisory Foundation’s (FPSF) plea for grant of approval to act as a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) for distributors of mutual fund products.

A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said since the apex court was hearing the matter, the market regulator could not have decided to initiate a parallel proceedings and hear the issue afresh.

Three Indians – Mukesh Ambani, Azim Premji and Dilip Shanghvi – have made it to a global list of 50 wealthiest people that is topped by Bill Gates.

According to a new list by Wealth-X in collaboration with Business Insider, Mukesh Ambani was ranked at the 27th place on the list with a net worth of $24.8 billion, while Azim Premji and Dilip Shanghvi were ranked at the 43rd and 44th place with assets worth $16.5 billion and $16.4 billion respectively.

The government is planning to opt for the buyback route, instead of an offer for sale (OFS), for divesting its stake in Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) and National Aluminium Company (Nalco) so that it can get higher prices from the stake sale.

The government expects to garner around R9,000 crore from these buybacks whereas OFS is likely to fetch R5,600 crore at the current market valuations.

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