Car companies are ready with New Year offerings and at least three crucial launches are lined up for this month.

Tata Motors, which found its footing in the car market after the launch of a compact sedan a few months ago, will unleash its second model Bolt, a hatchback, on January 22.

Benchmark share indices came off their early highs amid profit taking in select index heavyweights even as Tata Group shares continued to trade higher.

At 10:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 193 points at 27,468 after hitting an intra-day high of 27,508 and the 50-share Nifty was up 55 points at 8,290 after touching 8,303 in early trades.

After close to 18 years, the income tax (I-T) department’s proceedings against former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa and her close associate Sasikala in four cases ended today.

The chief metropolitan magistrate here discharged both individuals after the prosecution said it had wished to withdraw the cases.

In a discussion paper — ‘Revisiting capital raising process’ — issued on Thursday, the market regulator suggested a timeline reduction would be possible if cheque payments are done away with.

“...The post issue timelines will reduce from T+12 days to T+6 days. Once the process gets stabilised, timelines can be further curtailed to T+3/2 days. Further, on account of reduction in printing of application forms, the overall cost of public issues will also come down,” said the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and promoters reduced their holding in tech major Infosys during the December quarter.

The promoter holding declined by 300 basis points (bps) to 13.08 after four promoters sold stake worth $1.1 billion in December. FII holding also reduced by 109 bps to 41.58 per cent.

The merger between Kotak Mahindra Bank and ING Vysya Bank has received the approval of shareholders of both.

Shareholders of the Mumbai-based Kotak bank approved the merger proposal at an extraordinary general meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday. The exchange ratio has been fixed at 725 Kotak shares with 1, 000 ING Vysya shares.

Standard Chartered is closing the bulk of its global equities business and axing 4,000 retail banking jobs as Peter Sands moves to aggressively cut costs to reverse the Asia-focused bank’s fortunes, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

As part of a cost-cutting plan, the bank is now dismantling its stock broking, equity research, and equity listing desks worldwide, cutting around 200 jobs and exiting a business that it views as non-core and unprofitable.

Unnao MP Sakshi Maharaj, whose recent remarks have sparked off a lot of controversy, on Thursday said he was ready to be hanged if he had said something wrong.

"I think the media is stretching the issue a bit too long. I have already spoken on this issue several times. Now, it is time to forget it. The place where I spoke was not a political stage. If people are so hurt by my statement, then a strict law should be brought against a family that has more than two or three children. If people think I said something wrong, I am ready to be hanged for that," he said, in an interview.

If reports are to be believed, a proposal is brewing in the corridors of North Block to merge the UTI Mutual Fund with the fund arm of one of its shareholders and country’s largest bank State Bank of India. The ill-conceived proposal could not have been more ill-timed.

It comes at a time when UTI is looking to consolidate under a new chief after being headless for a few years. The market conditions have improved dramatically and this could have helped the fund house, which still has the best mix of funds, be it the asset type (equity vs debt) and the geographical spread, to surge forward.

In a move that will boost fee income for banks, the finance ministry has agreed to a long pending proposal of lenders for paying commission for transactions for direct benefit transfer. This will make account opening by the lenders under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) scheme viable.

Earlier, a task force headed by Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the UIDAI recommended a commission of 3.14 per cent to be paid for all DBTs handled by banks and business correspondents. However, provision for the expenditure was not made in previous budgets.

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