India's equity mutual fund managers have kept their top-10 picks almost intact through 2014, barring three stocks. Despite being giants in their respective sectors, the three failed to make it to the most-invested stocks this year, said Value Research.

The three are telecom giant Bharti Airtel, fast-moving consumer goods major ITC and Housing Development Finance Corporation.

Billionaire Anil Ambani is conscious of the over Rs 1.14 trillion-debt burden his Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) companies are shouldering. Naturally, he is making every attempt to infuse equity and pare debt from the overstretched balance sheets of group companies.

For Reliance Capital, the financial services arm of the group, this also serves the objective of getting its focus back on core operations. The company brought down its debt to Rs 20,564 crore at the end of the first half of the current financial year from Rs 25,577 crore a year ago. This improved the debt-equity ratio of the company to 1.61 from 1.93.

The high court here on Tuesday permitted Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi to sell and import Qualcomm chipset-based handsets till January 8, as a temporary measure.

In an interim order, the high court had, on December 8, restrained Xiaomi as well as online e-commerce site Flipkart from selling, in India, any handsets of the Chinese mobile maker that run on the technology patented by Swedish technology company Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson.

NTPC, the country’s largest state-owned thermal power producer, has issued a second expression of interest (EOI) for acquiring coal-based thermal power projects, to put to use its cash reserve of around Rs 5,000 crore.

The company has invited applications from state electricity boards/power generation companies, independent power producers, power plant developers and captive power producers. The earlier EOI saw an overwhelming response from the private sector. As many as 32 projects with a cumulative generation capacity of 55,000 Mw were lined up for sale to the ‘maharatna’ stature company. Of the shortlisted five projects, private consultancy KPMG is finalising the best buy for NTPC.

The total illicit financial outflows from India between 2003 and 2012 were $439 billion —$94.8 billion of that in 2012 alone — shows a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington DC-based research and advisory organization.

On the list of the world’s biggest exporters of illicit financial flows from 2003 to 2012, India currently ranks fourth — after China, Russia and Mexico, in that order. Compared with the previous rankings, India and Malaysia have switched positions in terms of cumulative illicit financial outflows, with India moving to the fourth spot and Malaysia to fifth. This was mainly because of a sharp increase in outflows from India since 2008. To put the figures in perspective, the $439 billion of outflows come to about 23 per cent of India’s gross domestic product in 2013 ($1.87 trillion).

Eighty four students were among at least 104 people killed today when heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed an army-run school in Pakistan's volatile Peshawar city today and opened indiscriminate fire on them, Pakistan daily Dawn reported. The Pakistan Home Department confirmed the same. At least 80 others have been reported injured.

Several militants wearing black dress entered Army Public School on Warsak Road by scaling its walls and started indiscriminate firing, a senior official said.

Shares of state-owned oil marketing companies such as Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum were up 1-3% each gained in an otherwise weak market as global crude oil prices dropped to fresh 51/2 year lows today.

Lower crude oil prices would help reduce the under-recoveries on sale of subsidised cooking fuels such as kerosene and LPG gas for domestic use.

Rejecting the CBI's closure report in the allotment of a coal block to Kumar Mangalam Birla's firm Hindalco, a special court today asked the CBI to question the then coal minister Manmohan Singh in the case.

"I desire that statements of then coal minister (Manmohan Singh) be recorded," a special judge told CBI.

Within two months of diesel prices being made market-linked, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has begun offering discounts to customers at its retail outlets.

According to retailers and dealers, RIL offers a discount of Rs 5 on petrol worth Rs 300 and Rs 10 on diesel of Rs 1,000. For diesel worth Rs 12,000, the discount is Rs 225. An RIL executive confirmed this.

Five months after investor activism forced Tata Motors, the country’s biggest automotive manufacturer, to do a rethink on the pay offered to its senior management, the company is again seeking shareholder approval on remuneration to two executive directors (EDs).

The two are Ravindra Pisharody and Satish Borwankar — whose packages were contested by shareholders and proxy advisory firms when the company posted a loss at the standalone level last year.

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