Top 10 business headlines: Jet board meeting, Q4 results preview, and more

From Jet Airways board meeting to Q4 results preview, Business Standard brings you top 10 stories that made news on Monday

Jet Airways stares at shutdown, board meets today as lenders refuse funds

India’s first private airline Jet Airways is headed towards a total grounding and a decision could be taken as early as Tuesday after a meeting of its board of directors. Left with no cash, a seven-plane fleet and fuel to run operations only till Tuesday afternoon, the end is imminent, said sources close to the development. Read more here

Nestle drops plan to pay royalty in perpetuity to Swiss parent

Nestlé India has dropped a controversial proposal to pay royalty in perpetuity to its Swiss parent after minority shareholders and proxy advisory firms said the move was against good corporate governance norms. In an exchange filing, the food major said it was amending agenda item number six of the notice of the annual general meeting, slated for April 25, where it sought to pay royalty of 4.5 per cent in perpetuity. Read more here

Foxconn set to begin mass production of iPhones in India this year

Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou said the iPhone will go into mass production in India this year, a shift for the largest assembler of Apple Inc.’s handsets that has long concentrated production in China. Apple has had older phones produced at a plant in Bangalore for several years, but now will expand manufacturing to more recent models. Read more here

It's raining forex in Indian economy with equity, bond deals in pipeline

It’s raining foreign exchange in the Indian economy with foreign players investing heavily in the debt and equity instruments of home-grown firms. Statistics collated by Business Standard suggest that $18.5 billion would make its way through these deals in the next few months. These will follow robust foreign portfolio investor (FPI) interest seen in the fourth quarter of 2018-19. Read more here

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon in India to discuss strategy to take on Amazon

Doug McMillon, the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of world’s largest retailer Walmart Inc, is on a crucial visit to India, especially to the headquarters of Flipkart in Bengaluru to assess the progress made by the home-grown e-commerce giant. Among others, he is likely to discuss the strategy to take on Walmart’s US rival Amazon with whom the Bentonville-headquartered company is in a fierce battle for dominance in India’s online retail market. Read more here

Q4 results preview: Telecom, retail to offset weak refining for RIL

Oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) is expected to report weak refining earnings though its retail and petrochemical businesses are expected to partially offset the weakness. With a busy sale and acquisition-driven March quarter, the street will look for guidance on capital expenditure, debt and road ahead for the services business. Read more here

India's trade deficit reaches a record high of $176 billion in 2018-19

Despite exports and imports growing at the same rate of 9 per cent, India’s trade deficit reached a record high of $176 billion in 2018-19. According to data released by the commerce and industry ministry on Monday, exports stood at $32.55 billion in March, taking the total tally in 2018-19 to $331 billion. While it is the first time that outbound trade has remained above $300 billion for two consecutive years, exports couldn't cross the government’s internal target of $350 billion. In the 2017-18 financial year, exports stood at $303.52 billion. Read more here

With Nirbhay missile test and Coast Guard vessel, L&T issues reminder

Larsen & Toubro’s (L&T’s) defence business scored twin successes on Monday, with a successful test of the long-range Nirbhay cruise missile in Odisha, followed by the ahead-of-time delivery of a 2,140-tonne Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) to the Coast Guard (CG) at Visakhapatnam. The Nirbhay test—its sixth developmental flight trial—was crucial, with three of its five previous firings having been unsuccessful to varying degrees. This test, however, was a complete success, says the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), which manages the Nirbhay project. Read more here

Microsoft’s defunct Internet Explorer is a hot target for cyber criminals

A researcher named John Page on Monday revealed how hackers can use an unpatched exploit in the Internet Explorer to both spy on Windows users and steal their local data. This vulnerability affects Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2. This vulnerability came to light after email accounts across Microsoft’s Outlook, Hotmail and MSN services were left vulnerable for almost three months after it emerged that hackers had targeted them – according to a news report in the Live Mint. Read more here

How small change among millennials transformed packers and movers business

From travelling to relocation, millennials like to keep the luggage light. Start-ups operating in the movers and packers space who get most of their relocating clients through the online portals say the size of the baggage of millennials is a fraction of the size of those belonging to the previous generation. And the primary driver of this trend is technology, which has shrunk bulky music systems and racks of CDs into mobile phones or ipods, and stacks of books into Kindles. A shorter product lifecycle is another reason with items such as cars, sofas and TVs losing their lifetime-possession tag. Read more here