Gautam Adani-promoted Adani Power has joined the race for coal block reallocation with all its might. Adani Power has made 11 bids for six of a total 19 blocks being auctioned under the second phase of the coal block allocation process. These blocks belong to Schedule-III, about-to-produce mines without any associated end-use infrastructure.

The technical bids for these 19 blocks was opened on Sunday. Naveen Jindal's Jindal Steel & Power, the biggest loser as the fallout of a Supreme Court's judgment in August 2014, closely followed with eight bids, four each for two blocks.

Idea Cellular, the country’s third largest mobile operator by revenue and subscribers, will need as much as Rs 15,000 crore to renew its existing spectrum in the upcoming auctions, which is expected to see cut-throat bidding among telcos.

The Mumbai-headquartered telecom major is most precariously positioned as far as number of licences are due for renewal and the contribution they make to overall subscriber and revenue base.

A large number of listed firms, including top blue-chips, are facing heat of the stock market authorities for sudden surge in their share prices and trading volumes as also for ‘speculative’ information leaks leaving investors at large in the lurch.

In just about one and a half months since the beginning of this year, the stock exchanges have sought ‘clarifications’ from at least 19 Sensex blue chips including giants like Mahindra and Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, SBI, Coal India, Wipro, Hero Motocorp, ICICI Bank, Cipla and L&T.

L&T’s Q3 profitability was below our estimate, led by losses in the hydrocarbons business, unfavourable job mix, very weak non-infrastructure sales and one-offs. FY15 will be a lacklustre year but FY16 looks better given (i) likely continuation of strong sales growth in the infrastructure segment (+20%) and pick-up in non-infrastructure sales on improving inflow/backlog in FY15, (ii) losses in the hydrocarbon business will be largely provided for in FY15, (iii) potential impact, if any, of the infrastructure segment’s overseas execution on margin will materially reflect only in FY17, (iv) continued positive news flow on better domestic ordering, which will eventually be followed by actual higher order awards, though potentially back-ended.

Tata Motors’ Q3FY15 consolidated operating performance (after adjusting for one-off provisions/incentives) was marginally below our expectations. JLR’s sales realisation was above expectations by 4% but its Ebitda margin (after normalising the impact of annual incentives received in Q3) was 52bps lower than our expectations. Overall, JLR’s absolute Ebitda (earnings before interest taxes and amortisation) was in line with our expectations.

Though its exploration and production business contributes just 1.51% to its turnover (Rs 6068 crore out of Rs 4.01 lakh crore in FY14) and less than 10% to its sum-of-the-parts valuation of R941 per share, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is serious about taking the government to task over what it perceives to be a series of arbitrary actions on the latter’s part. Last month, RIL filed its fifth arbitration suit against the government, and the first since the NDA came to power (see box, Furious Five).

STARING at the turf below, Misbah-ul-Haq dragged his feet on his way to a shattered Pakistan dressing room. The score was 220/9 and the fans in green seemed resigned to their fate. The regular followers of India vs Pakistan at the World Cup had seen this before. The only thing that had changed was the venue and score. It was 231 all out (Mohali, 2011) and 152 all out (Johannesburg, 2007). India stretched their World Cup-winning streak over Pakistan by registering a 76-run win on Sunday and once again, it was the Misbah frame on which the credits were rolling.

Indian IT major Infosys on Monday announced its first major acquisition under new CEO Vishal Sikka by making public a $200 million cash deal to buy the Israeli firm Panaya, Inc., a provider of automation technology for large scale enterprise software management. The deal will be closed by the end of the current financial year.

Infosys’ who have been very conservative in its acquisition strategies over the years said the Panaya deal reflects “execution of its Renew and New strategy to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of current service lines by leveraging automation, innovation and artificial intelligence’’.

In the December quarter, the story for HDFC Bank Ltd was not any different from those of other lenders when it came to loan growth. Despite rosy projections of a 7.5% economic growth in that quarter, credit demand lagged. HDFC Bank’s advances grew 17% from a year ago, the lowest in four quarters.

While the bank’s focus on the retail customer has led this segment to account for 51% of its loan book, growth was faster in the corporate segment at 20%. But that is not exactly a reason to cheer because it was mostly working capital demand and loans to small and medium enterprises—a segment susceptible to bad loans. Even in the retail segment, unsecured loans such as personal loans and credit cards are growing at a robust pace, confirming that this is an environment with fewer growth opportunities for lenders.

NEW DELHI: It took a crippling cabin crew shortage for Air India to realize the extent to which it has been underutilizing its precious human resource.

Aviation safety rules stipulate that an airhostess pilot must stop flying as soon as she reports to the airline that she is pregnant. While all private airlines give women flight crew the option of shifting to ground duties, AI has all along been sending them on long maternity leave as soon as they report pregnancy.

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