A major fire broke out in a multi-storey building housing a textile market on Puna Kumbharia road in Surat around 9 am on Thursday. Goods of Rs 300-400 crore are estimated to have been damaged in the fire at the 17-storey Orchid building, which houses 300 offices of textile traders and makers.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has sent another showcause notice to HDFC Asset Management Company for 109 cases of front-running by a former employee — Nilesh Kapadia — of the fund house. In June 2010, the market regulator had found similar cases of fund-running by Kapadia.

We expect Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan to continue to pause on June 3. After all, CPI-based inflation is peaking off, although El Nino risks are rising. Second, high rates are delaying recovery. Finally, we expect RBI to continue to ensure rupee stability by recouping foreign exchange (FX) reserves. In Delhi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has already laid out his agenda of restoring growth, containing inflation and fiscal consolidation.

Now, HDFC Bank’s debit card users cannot avail of benefits such as free insurance covers if they don’t use their cards for shopping or online transactions at least once a month, even if they continue to use it for cash withdrawals from automated teller machines.

Private sector lender YES Bank is set to raise $500 million by issuing fresh shares to a cluster of investors. This will lead to dilution of 10-12 per cent in promoter shareholding.

Officials involved in the qualified institutional placement (QIP) said the bank would sell shares at Rs 540-550/share. Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS, HSBC, JM Financial and Motilal Oswal Financial Services are the lead arrangers for the issue.

Kolkata-based United Bank of India (UBI) has slapped a wilful defaulter's notice on Vijay Mallya, chairman of grounded Kingfisher Airlines, and other board members after the company defaulted. It gave the company 15 days to respond.

A email query to Kingfisher on the issue did not elicit any response. The airline has been grounded since October 2012.

The Centre is planning to extend an olive branch to the states to end the stalemate on Goods and Services Tax (GST). Finance Minister Arun Jaitely will separately reach out to Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to address their concerns on fiscal autonomy and revenue loss.

To win back confidence of the states, the finance ministry might also make provisions in the upcoming Budget for adequately compensating the states for the losses they made due to reduction in Central Sales Tax (CST) — a tax on inter-state movement of goods.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan plans to regulate the sale of tobacco. He said he would soon propose higher taxes on tobacco products to discourage consumption, ahead of World No Tobacco Day, on May 31. The move comes in the wake of increasing disease burden due to the use of tobacco products.

The new civil aviation minister, P Ashok Gajapathi Raju, said he would not take any hasty decision on privatisation of Air India. In his first address to the media after assuming office on Thursday, he said, “There are private airlines and there is a public sector company. The public sector does have a place and a lot of countries have public sector companies. As of now, we are trying to formulate our views.”

Infosys board member and president, B G Srinivas, who recently resigned from the company, will be joining PCCW Limited, which is the holding company of Hong Kong-based information and communications technology firm HKT Group Holdings Limited. Srinivas will be appointed as PCCW's group managing director and executive director, with effect from July 14. His resignation at Infosys would be effective June 10.

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