Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy today expressed hope that the black money stashed in foreign banks would return to the country in about one year.

“We are optimistic that the black money stashed in foreign banks would return to the country in about one year time, much before the expectation of the people,” Swamy told reporters here.

Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has dipped nearly 3% to Rs 1,611 in early morning deals on NSE on reports that the company management has said it might miss the annual revenue and margin forecast owing to delays in projects and problems in execution of hydrocarbon projects.

The company management has said it might miss the annual revenue and margin forecast owing to delays in projects and problems in execution of hydrocarbon projects, a Business Standard report suggests.

The benchmark BSE Sensex hit new record-high of 28,027.96 and the NSE Nifty touched another peak of 8,383.05, respectively in opening trade on Monday as investors cheered expansion of the Union Cabinet amidst continued foreign capital inflows.

Besides, a mixed trend at other Asian markets influenced trading sentiments.

The Narendra Modi government made the first major expansion and restructuring of its council of ministers on Sunday, six months after taking charge. With 21 ministers taking oath of office and secrecy - four in the Cabinet rank, three as ministers of state with independent charge and 14 as ministers of state - the government's bench strength has now reached 66.

According to a late-evening announcement, former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar (to be elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh) will take over as defence minister from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who until now held defence as an additional portfolio. Suresh Prabhu (yet to be elected to either House) replaces D V Sadananda Gowda as railway minister. J P Nadda has been given the health & family welfare portfolio and Birender Singh has become the Union minister for rural development, panchayati raj, drinking water and sanitation.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is set to overhaul the insider trading norms, first framed two decades ago. The regulator is expected to approve the new norms at its board meeting on November 19.

Sources in the know said the new rules would be far more stringent than the regulations currently in place but not as strict as those mentioned in the draft document circulated in December last year.

Bandaru Dattatreya from Telangana and Sujana Chowdary from Andhra Pradesh are likely to be inducted into the union cabinet, which is likely to be expanded Sunday.

Dattatreya, national vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a member of Lok Sabha from Secunderabad, while Y S Chowdary, popularly known as Sujana Chowdary, belongs to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and is a member of Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh.

Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s autobiography ‘Playing It My Way’ has broken all records of an adult hardback on pre-order subscriptions across both - fiction and non-fiction - categories, a statement from the publishers said.

Tendulkar’s book broke the record set by Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson, which had sold 130,000 copies.

Former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram claimed that the way UPA government could have handled the 2G issue differently and that it caused a lot of damage to the Congress party's image.

At the book launch of Rajdeep Sardesai's '2014: The election that changed India' in Delhi on Friday, Chidambaram said that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have shown a strict refusal to the 'first come first serve' basis of the 2G licence allocation and employed a better way to allot the same.

The death toll from the Ebola epidemic has risen to 4,950 out of 13,241 cases in the three worst-hit countries of West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, calling for widespread rigorous control measures to halt the virus.

"Case incidence is declining in some districts in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, while steep rises persist in other districts," the United Nations agency said in a statement.

To push to participation in the government's disinvestment programme, the finance ministry has written to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to promote awareness among retail investors about the coming issues of public sector units (PSUs).

As the government is planning to tap the markets through the auction route, retail investors might not find it easy to bid. The finance ministry has told Sebi it should try to spread awareness through tickers on TV channels, websites and bulk messages.

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