Tax-free bonds for retail investors might soon be back, after a gap of one year.

National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) have received in-principle approval from the government to raise Rs 24,000 crore and Rs 6,000 crore, respectively, via this route.

As of today, rail commuters can use a mobile phone app to obtain tickets in the unreserved category as the Indian Railways takes forward its initiative for paperless ticketing.

“We have launched a mobile-based paperless unreserved ticketing application,” said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Mutual fund houses offloaded shares of pharmaceutical major Lupin Ltd, information technology (IT) giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Motilal Oswal Financial Services over the last two months.

While fund managers reduced their cash holdings and went on a buying spree over the last two months, they avoided these stocks.

The Indian rupee was trading marginally higher at 62.83 per dollar against previous day's closing value of 62.85 a dollar tracking gains in equities.

BSE Healthcare index was the top gainer up 1% followed by Capital Goods, FMCG, Metal, Oil and Gas indices.

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), India's largest maker of utility vehicles and tractors, opened its extended automobile manufacturing facility at Zaheerabad in Telangana on Wednesday.

The facility, which was expanded with an investment of Rs 250 crore, comes with an enhanced production capacity of 92,000 vehicles a year, while the overall plant capacity will be 140,000 units per year.

Private sector lender YES Bank today reported a Q4 net profit of Rs 551 crore, an annual rise of 28%.

The asset quality ratios were flat, with net NPA at 0.12% compared to 0.10% in the previous quarter. Gross NPA came in at 0.41% compared to 0.42% in Q3.

ITC Ltd, India's largest cigarette maker, is in talks with Century Textile and Industries Ltd to buy its paper division in a bid to diversify revenue to non-tobacco businesses, said two sources directly involved in the deal.

In separate transactions, Century's textile division will be merged with Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd and the cement unit will be merged with UltraTech Cement Ltd , as part of the company's restructuring, the sources said.

Companies are required to inform shareholders of their annual general meetings 21 days before the event. However, shareholders who watch stock exchange websites for this information might not always get this three-week notice, according to Shriram Subramanian, managing director of InGovern Research Services. Reason: only some companies make an exchange disclosure; many don’t.

This problem related to non-uniform disclosure standards by companies on issues such as the important dates (as above) and material developments such as getting large orders or trading in securities by insiders is likely to be addressed with finality by the regulator.

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), headed by Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, will meet on April 30 to discuss 41 proposals.

These including one from Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) to raise its foreign investment ceiling to 55 per cent. At present, foreign investors together hold 48.5 per cent in it, pursuant to its merger with ING Vysya Bank. Foreign investors can acquire up to 49 per cent stake in Indian lenders through the automatic route; beyond this, FIPB permission is required.

Credit rating agency Moody’s has said Reliance Communications (RCom), which has 66 per cent of its total debt in US dollars, does not have sufficient cushion against the risks from the possibility of the rupee depreciating up to 20 per cent from March 31 this year. Over the past 12 months, the rupee has depreciated 13 per cent against the dollar.

The global rating agency has found that six out of 49 non-financial high-yield companies it rates in South and Southeast Asia with dollar-denominated debt don’t have such ‘mitigants’. These 49 firms have dollar debt totalling $56.5 billion. Out of this, RCom has $4.6 billion outstanding dollar debt.

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