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Focus On The Compass And Not The Speedometer, Says Uday Kotak Asia’s richest banker Uday Kotak has warned against pushing loan growth “for the sake of loan growth”, at a time when growth in the economy is slow and asset quality worries have not abated. Kotak, speaking to analysts on Monday, struck a cautionary note after Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. reported loan growth at a multi-quarter low of 10 percent in the October-December 2019 period. The bank’s net profit for the third quarter rose 28 percent year-on-year. While the slower-than-expected loan growth spooked markets, Kotak’s commentary suggests the lender is...

ISRO Chief K Sivan has updated the media on the upcoming Gaganyaan mission. He also talked about the much-anticipated Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is likely later this year. ISRO Chief K Sivan on Wednesday said that four astronauts short-listed for the Gaganyaan mission would go to Russia for training by month-end. Updating media on the development of the mission, Sivan added that the four Indian astronauts would fly in a module that will be from India. “In 1984, Rakesh Sharma flew in a Russian module, but this time the Indian astronauts will fly in an Indian module from India,” K Sivan...

TCS set to launch its first software platform for Indian market With software products and platforms driving growth for Tata Consultancy Services, India is turning into a new frontier for the company. “We are going to be launching a platform specifically for India very soon,” TCS Chief Operating Officer NG Subramaniam, told BusinessLine. Launching an India-specific software platform will allow the company to accelerate growth here. The Indian market is growing much faster than the company’s largest market, North America. For the quarter ended 31st of December, North America market revenues grew only 4.1 percent for TCS, while India revenues continued...

Jeff Bezos’ WhatsApp hack is a stark reminder of how anyone can be hacked Last night, The Guardian and Financial Times published reports citing it’s “highly probable” that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS), played a key role in hacking Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos’ phone in 2018. The hack shows how easy it is to get control of a top executive’s data. But we’ll get to that later, let’s first look at the history and methodology behind the hack. An encrypted video file sent by the prince to Bezos on WhatsApp allowed the phone to be hacked. Experts at FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm that led...

‘We cannot sustain the debt load today, so we have to transform that load’, says economic minister Martin Guzman. Buenos Aires – Argentina’s economy minister is sending a bill to Congress aimed at creating a legal basis for Latin America‘s third-largest economy to improve the terms of billions of dollars in loans. On Tuesday, he asked lenders to exhibit good faith as the new government seeks to fix a “profound” crisis. “The situation today in Argentina is critical. We cannot sustain the debt load today, so we have to transform that [debt agreement] into something that is sustainable,” said Minister of Economy Martin Guzman at a...

Iranian lawmaker offers $3 million reward ‘to anyone who kills Trump’: Report An Iranian lawmaker on Tuesday offered a USD 3-million reward to “anyone who kills” US President Donald Trump to avenge the assassination of a top general, semi-official news agency ISNA reported. Ahmad Hamzeh, a little-known member of the Majlis, made the offer on behalf of the people of Kerman, the hometown and final resting place of storied commander Major General Qasem Soleimani. “We will give USD 3 million to anyone who kills Trump,” Hamzeh, who represents Kahnouj county near the southeastern city of Kerman, was quoted as saying...

Before her IMF stint, a ‘neo-liberal’ Gita Gopinath ruffled feathers within Left’s old guard Earlier this week, International Monetary Fund’s chief economist Gita Gopinath raised a few eyebrows when she called India the biggest drag on global growth. IMF now expects the Indian economy to grow 4.8 percent this fiscal, a steep downgrade from the 7.5 percent it had forecast just a year ago. The Harvard economics professor, married to IAS officer Iqbal Dhaliwal, is the first-ever woman chief economist at IMF and is a renowned expert on international trade and finance. But long before her IMF stint, Gopinath has had a...

Spencer’s Retail share price climbs 11% after Radhakishan Damani picks stake in December quarter Shares of RPG Group company Spencer’s Retail rallied 11.5 percent intraday on January 21 after veteran investor and D-Mart promoter Radhakishan Damani’s name appeared in the December quarter shareholding pattern of the company. The stock has been one of the biggest gainers in last 15 days, rising more than 41 percent. It was quoting at Rs 82.60, up Rs 8, or 10.72 percent on the BSE at 1134 hours IST. The latest shareholding pattern of the company said ace investor Radhakishan Damani bought 16,61,324 equity shares (representing 2.09...

Realistic optimism: How McKinsey Asia chairman Oliver Tonby sees future of India growth story The Asia chairman of McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s biggest names in management consulting, feels the buzz around the India growth story is “realistic optimism”. At the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos summit, Oliver Tonby told India Today TV that he had “two opposing thoughts” on India. One one hand, he said, issues affecting both India and the rest of the world — such environmental sustainability, inequality, economic slowdown, and geopolitical tensions — were worrying. But Tonby said he and many McKinsey clients were optimistic...

Sri Lanka civil war: Missing persons are dead, says Gotabaya Thousands of personsreported missing since the time of Sri Lanka’s civil war are “actually dead”, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has said. The President made the remark in a recent meeting with the UN Resident Coordinator, according to a statement from his office. Outlining his plans to address the issue of missing persons, “he explained that these missing persons are actually dead. Most of them had been taken by the LTTE or forcibly conscripted. The families of the missing attest to it. However, they do not know what has become of them...