State bank of India, the country’s largest lender, on Tuesday played down reports about the government’s move to merge public sector bank Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) with itself.

“I do not know the basis of it (reports of merger of BMB with SBI) and have not yet been approached for it,” SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya told reporters.

The Department of Telecommunications will soon move a Cabinet note to hive off state-run BSNL's towers into a separate company.

The new unit would have a valuation of Rs 8,000-10,000 crore. BSNL has about 71,000 towers across India. The company generated revenues of around Rs 200 crore from the tower business, which is expected to go up to Rs 2,000 crore once the new unit was set up.

CHENNAI: AIADMK cadres began celebrations on Tuesday as party chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa established a thumping margin of over one lakh votes against her nearest rival in the R K Nagar byelection.

At the end of the eleventh round Jayalalithaa had secured 1,09,182 votes while CPI's C Mahendran got 6,732 votes.

New Delhi, June 29 (PTI): Reliance Industries may defer the development of R-Series and other satellite gasfields in the eastern offshore KG-D6 block if the price outlook is uncertain, its junior partner Niko Resources of Canada said.

RIL has made 19 oil and gas discoveries in the KG-DWN-98/3 block in the Bay of Bengal and so far only three - Dhirubhai-1 and 3 gas and MA oil and gasfields - have been brought to production. Multi-billion dollar development plans for five other finds, including the significant R-Series, have been approved.

New Delhi/Mumbai: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is in advanced talks to invest in Indian online payment platform and e-commerce firm Paytm, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial, which runs the Alipay online payment platform, is already an investor in Paytm’s parent, having agreed in February to buy a 25% stake.

Software maker company, Microsoft is shutting down its web display advertising business as CEO Satya Nadella is focusing on three key areas – personal computing, cloud platforms and business productivity. The company is handing operations over to AOL and App Nexus Inc. Financial details of the deal are still undisclosed.

About 1,200 jobs will be impacted due to this change, with some positions could axed or transferred as part of the change. Now, AOL will be responsible for all Microsoft’s display advertising inventory across several platforms including MSN, Outlook.com and Skype, and in nine markets such as U.S., the U.K., Canada, Brazil and France among others. AOL was recently acquired by Verizon in a $4.4 billion all cash deal.

The benchmark BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty continued their firm trade in the late afternoon session on account of buying in frontline blue chip counters and taking cues from Asian counterparts.

After a volatile session, BSE Sensex closed 135.68 points up at 27780.83 while NSE Nifty gained 50.10 pts at 8370.10.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) today raised a red flag over distribution practices governing the mutual fund industry.

Speaking at the CII's Mutual Fund Summit in Mumbai, Sebi Chairman UK Sinha cited a survey of 25 jurisdictions. He said distributor commissions were over 2% in four of them and India was in the group of countries which had higher commissions.

Mahindra and Mahindra has set up an Africa-focused business unit as it looks to maintain double-digit growth levels in the continent, the company said on Tuesday.

With an active presence in 20 African countries, Mahindra and Mahindra hopes the aggressive expansion will help spur a 10-fold increase in business over the next five to seven years.

Shareholders on Monday gave approval to Kotak Mahindra Bank's proposal for issuance of bonus shares.

The annual general meeting held on Monday approved issuance of “bonus shares in the proportion of one equity share for every equity share of face value Rs 5 held by such person on the record date,” Kotak Mahindra Bank said in a filing to the BSE.

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