Voices in support of environment protection have ebbed during economic down-turn, according to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management here.

It cautions that such situation can be potentially problematic from the perspective of a developing country like India.

BSE Sensex rallied over 291 points at 27,302.63 in early trade today after a long weekend on fresh buying by participants as the May series in derivatives segment began amid positive Asian cues.

The 30-share index, which had lost 385.07 points in the previous two sessions, rose by 291.32 points, or 1.08 per cent, at 27,302.63.

ICICI Bank’s Q4FY15 profit after tax at Rs 29 bn (up 10% year-on-year) came marginally below our estimate due to higher provisions. However, the quarter was characterised by improved operating performance, and incremental stress (albeit high) did not stray beyond guidance.

Key highlights were: (i) operating profitability (ex-treasury, lease, other income) clocked a healthy growth (>19% versus lower teens in Q3) on improving NIMs (up 11bps quarter-on-quarter to 3.57%) and controlled opex (up mere 8% y-o-y); (ii) fresh stress (fresh slippages and restructuring) was restricted to R22.5 bn, however, higher slippages from restructured book at 22.5 bn (R7.8 bn in Q3FY15) kept the stress elevated (but within guidance).

Bajaj Auto Ltd today reported one per cent increase in total sales in April at 3,36,274 units as against 3,31,529 units in the same month last year.

Motorcycle sales during the month declined by 5 per cent at 2,85,791 units as against 2,99,636 units in April last year, the company said in a statement.

State-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) has denied any plan to step into the 4,000-mega watt (MW) Tilaiya ultra mega power plant (UMPP) in Jharkhand after Reliance Power pulled out of the project citing undue delays in acquiring land for the project.

NTPC has clarified that it was not interested in taking over the project contrary to the prevailing “wrong impression that NTPC is very keen to step into the Tilaiya project”.

A deal signed between engineering firm L&T and French nuclear vendor Areva for maximising the localisation of critical components for the proposed 10,000-MW nuclear power plant at Jaitapur marks a desperate attempt to prune the cost of each of the six 1,650 MWe (mega watt electric) reactors to be deployed at the site in Maharashtra to about $4 billion. This is expected to translate into a generation cost equivalent of about Rs 7 per unit.

Social networking website Facebook may roll out a new feature called ‘Instant Articles’, which will offer news organizations, special ad models that will allow them to put news articles and videos on the site.

The move is made to get more sign-ups and user engagement as well as to provide the existing ones, an option to read posts and watch videos right from their News Feeds rather than loading website links.

Microsoft has acquired Digital Pen Tech Developer N-Trig for $30 million. N-Trig has been Microsoft’s partner since 2008.

Last year an N-Trig became a part of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 package, as per company’s blog post. Stevie Bathiche, Distinguished Scientist, Microsoft Surface, commenting on the acquisition said, “We can’t wait to show you what we’ll deliver for our Surface Fans in the future.

Mumbai: Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (R-Jio) has outspent most telecom operators in India and may soon surpass Bharti Airtel Ltd even before the telecom unit of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has started commercial operations, illustrating the extent billionaire Mukesh Ambani is willing to go to tap demand for wireless data in the world’s second biggest smartphone market.

R-Jio, which will start operations later this year, has spent $14 billion so far, more than India’s third largest mobile phone operator Idea Cellular Ltd.

Mumbai: Maruti Suzuki India Ltd gained as much as 8% while Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd rose 3.74% after top four players in passenger car segment registered double-digit volume growth in April.

“Narrowing gap between petrol-diesel fuel prices and increase in share of first-time buyers helped Maruti’s Mini segment register growth of 36% off a weak base,” Jefferies Llc, an American global investment bank and institutional securities firm said in a note.

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