MUMBAI: Yes Bank is gearing up to become the third Indian bank to have its shares listed on American stock exchanges. The youngest private bank has received a go-ahead from its board to raise up to $1 billion by way of American Depository Receipts or through a Qualified Institutional Placement. The permission follows a proposal to hike investment by foreign investors to 74% of the bank's paid-up share capital from the existing limit of 49%.

The country's largest housing finance company has cut lending rates for women borrowers by five basis points to 8.85% from 8.9% earlier. Following the current rate cut the top three home finance providers in the country - State Bank of India and ICICI Bank are providing identical rates.

In a statement issued here on Thursday, HDFC said that it has launched a new home loan product 'Women Power' with a differential rate of interest exclusively for women customers. The reduced rate will apply to home loans, home improvement loans, home extension loans and refinance loans. Besides loans for financing housing plots for home construction at 9.9%.

With growing new technologies creating huge mountain of data, it is critical to build its leadership and capabilities in big data laboratories for analytics, said R Chandrashekhar, president, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

He was speaking about the growth and prospects of Global In-house Centres (GIC), which are captive IT centres of global companies in India.

Shares of L&T Finance Holdings has moved higher by 4% to Rs 66.45 on the NSE in an otherwise weak market after reporting a 10% year on year (yoy) jump in its consolidated net profit before exceptional items at Rs 206 crore for the quarter ended March 2015 (Q4). Net interest income grew 21% at Rs 706 crore on yoy basis.

Gross non-performing assets (NPA) during the quarter under review declined to 3.01% against 3.18% and net NPA to 1.98% from 2.29% over the previous year quarter, L&T Finance Holdings, the non-banking financial arm of Larsen & Toubro said in a filing.

German luxury carmaker Audi today launched a new version of its sports car Audi TT in India priced at Rs 60.34 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi) as it tries to retain top position in Indian luxury market.

"This is the first of the five launches that we have planned in the next five months. Despite economic downturn last year we have grown," Audi India Head Joe King told reporters here.

Stating that Reliance Industries (RIL) has no locus standi to raise dispute on the ONGC’s performance, the PSU explorer on Wednesday accused the firm of draining gas from its reservoirs at 98/2KG Basin block through the latter’s wells. RIL operates the adjacent block 98/3 KG Basin.

ONGC told the Delhi High Court that it wants to secure its rights, which are being jeopardised by continuous production activity from the four wells of RIL to its detriment. ONGC had earlier accused RIL of drawing natural gas worth an estimated Rs 30,000 crore from its fields adjacent to the latter’s KG-D6 block.

Markets continued to trade higher, amid firm global cues, led by financials while IT major TCS and index heavyweight Reliance Industries also witnessed renewed buying interest at lower levels in early trades.

At 9:35AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 119 points at 28,009 and the 50-share Nifty was up 48 points at 8,477.

Shares of YES Bank were trading higher by 4% at Rs 825, extending its previous day’s 1.5% gain on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), after reporting a 28% year-on-year (y-o-y) rise in net profit at Rs 551 crore for the quarter ended March 2015 (Q4), on back of higher interest income and a healthy growth in advances to retail and small and medium enterprises (SME).

Net interest income rose 36% to Rs 977 crore despite a flat net interest margin sequentially at 3.2%, marginally up from 3% from the year-ago period. The non-interest income grew 32% to Rs 590 crore on yoy basis.

ICICI Bank has launched iWear, a application for smart watches. This is available for Android watch users and can be downloaded from the Google Playstore. It will also be available on Apple watches.

A few days ago, HDFC Bank had said its mobile banking app will be available on the Apple Watch, which is yet to be launched in India. HDFC Bank’s mobile banking app has about 75 features and those commonly used will be available in the watch, such as balance enquiry, re-charge of pre-paid mobile phones, cheque book request, account statement as well as paying utility bills.

The Industrial Training Institute (ITI) set up by country's largest power producer, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), in Korba was inaugurated to start the academic activities from the coming session.

The ITI had been set up by the company in the vicinity of the NTPC Korba power station. Built over an area of 10 acres at Chorbhati village near Korba, the company took up the project as part of Community Development initiatives.

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