Top headlines: Zee, L&T face IT heat; pharma Covid vaccine war intensifies

From firms facing I-T heat over GST evasion charges to failure of govt-farmer talks, here are top headlines this morning

Firms face I-T heat over GST evasion charges; L&T, Zee offices 'surveyed'

About two dozen Mumbai-based companies and businesses have come under the scanner of tax officials for possible violations of provisions related to goods and services tax (GST) and alleged tax evasion through fake bills in the past two financial years. This resulted in a “survey action”, initiated by the Income-Tax (I-T) department along with a GST team, on Monday against two major business groups —construction major Larsen & Turbo (L&T) and Essel Group’s Zee Entertainment. Read More

RBI wants IDBI Bank to come out of PCA framework before stake sale

The government and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India should allow IDBI Bank to come out of the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework before they go ahead with the stake sale in the lender, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested. The banking regulator’s view is that the government’s plan to exit IDBI Bank would send a wrong signal, portraying the lender as “weak” and the one which is in “more trouble”, said a key source aware of the development. Read More

Data of 100 million credit, debit cardholders leaked on Dark Web

The first week of the year has recorded what could well be the biggest data leak in a while. The transaction data of about 100 million Indians, reportedly lifted from fintech service provider Juspay, was found being sold on the Dark Web. The Bengaluru-based digital payments platform, Juspay, processes transactions for many customers including big guns like Amazon, MakeMyTrip, Airtel, Flipkart, Uber and Swiggy. Juspay acknowledged a breach on August 18, 2020, but the data seems to have surfaced only now as a dump offered for sale — by several persons or one person. Read More

Bharat Biotech chief takes on Serum Institute in Covid-19 vaccine war

A vaccine war has surfaced as India prepares for a massive inoculation drive to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which has killed more than 150,000 in the country. A day after two vaccines got restricted emergency use authorisation from the drug regulator, one of them — Bharat Biotech — has raised the pitch against competition. This comes in the backdrop of wide criticism against the approval granted to Bharat Biotech, which is yet to complete its phase three trial and present efficacy data. Read More

Govt, farmer unions talks fail to make headway, to reconvene on Jan 8

The seventh round of talks between agitating farmers and the central government to resolve the impasse over the three farm laws and a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) yet again failed to make headway. Both sides dug in their heels before deciding to reconvene on January 8. Officials said while the central government wanted farmers to discuss the three Acts clause by clause, the farmers wanted nothing less than an assurance of total repeal. Read More

Mukesh Ambani gets ready to alchemise Reliance Industries into a tech giant

Mukesh Ambani was able to rope in top global names — Facebook, Google, Qualcomm, Intel — to buy into his new vision for Reliance to transform itself into a technology company rather than a mainly gas and oil company in 2020. Facebook’s WhatsApp and Reliance’s e-commerce app JioMart are going to collaborate on a seamless platform both for shoppers and the 30 million kirana  stores who will become last-mile delivery partners for Reliance. This is the behemoth that Ambani hopes can take on the might of Amazon and Flipkart. Read More

Tech Mahindra may partner Reliance Jio to provide 5G solutions to world

As part of its aggressive foray into the 5G telecom network space, IT major Tech Mahindra (TechM) is open to collaborating with Reliance Jio, which has developed its own 5G network and plans to sell it globally. TechM said it does not see Reliance as competition but rather as an ‘expansion of the industry’ through partnership. “The software capabilities that operators like Jio are building are likely to be offered to third party telcos…that provides a glorious opportunity for somebody like us, who are already doing a lot with operators worldwide..... Read More

Firms tilt towards fixed-rate bonds for borrowing as interest rates fall

Companies have increased the share of fixed-rate bonds in new bond issuances amid falling interest rates. The net outstanding data, which reflects all outstanding bonds and not just the bonds issued during a given period, shows that over 90 per cent of the bonds were fixed-rate ones in the March, June, and September quarters. This is the first time that it has crossed this mark since December 2017. Read More