12:25 PM
Vodafone, Idea Cellular begin deal closure talks
The Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone Group PLC have started talks on the “closing adjustments” of the merger between Idea Cellular and Vodafone India, and the discussions are focused on how to resolve Idea’s losses incurred since the announcement of the deal in March. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2018.
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(From left to right) Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group and Vittorio Colao, CEO, Vodafone Group at the press conference to announce Vodafone-Idea merger (Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar)
12:11 PM
InterGlobe Aviation share sale begins; stock down 3%
InterGlobe Aviation, the owner of India’s biggest airline IndiGo, dipped 3.3% to Rs 1,142 on the BSE in intra-day trade, after the share sale by its promoter begins today. The shares will be sold at a floor price of Rs 1,130 per share.
Two promoter entities of InterGlobe Aviation plans to offload about 11.19 million equity shares representing 2.91% of the total equity capital of the company through the offer for sale (OFS) route, the company said in regulatory filings.
READ MORE11:41 AM
Unitech extends fall
Unitech dipped 11% to Rs 6.85 on the BSE in intra-day trade, extending its Tuesday 5% decline, after the Supreme Court today stayed on the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) Order suspending its directors and allowing the government to appoint its nominees in their place.
READ MORE11:32 AM
BS Banking Round Table
What is wilful defaulter? Only two people can say if a person is a wilful defaulter -- the person himself or God: KC Chakrabarty , ex-deputy Governor, RBI
11:28 AM
BS Banking Round Table
Currently, one problem with DICGC insurance system is that it does not distinguish between weak and strong banks: Rajnish Kumar of State Bank of India
11:13 AM Buzzing stock
ALERT: Supreme Court stays NCLT order allowing govt to takeover Unitech Board; stock down over 3%
11:02 AM
Buzzing stock
Hindustan Copper surged 7% to Rs 95.65 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in early morning trade after the company announced that it has re-opened the Kendadih copper mine located in Jharkhand.
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10:58 AM BS Banking Round Table
For most of the banks, the MCLR has come down by more than 1%, When repo rate was going up in the past 7 years, the bank base rate increased less than the repo rate: Chanda Kocchar of ICICI Bank
10:56 AM
BS Banking Round Table
Why keep the interest rate high for those who keep Rs 50 lakh in their account? Savings for poor people are reduced. Anti-customer, anti-poor measures are being taken: KC Chakrabarty, ex-deputy Governor, RBI
10:50 AM
BS Banking Round Table
Banks have missed the opportunity arising out of Demonetisation; savings rate should have come down to 1%: KC Chakrabarty , ex-deputy Governor, RBI
10:46 AM
BS Banking Round Table
The biggest change that we see is with the payments system, how customers will interact with the rest of the ecosystem: Chanda Kocchar of ICICI Bank
10:46 AM
BS Banking Round Table
Credit growth was 5.5% earlier and it has reached 10% now. Retail growth is 16-17%. Corporate credit growth has shown an uptick: Chanda Kocchar of ICICI Bank
10:43 AM BS Banking Round Table
Capacity utilisation across various sectors is going up: Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank
10:40 AM
BS Banking Round Table
The various issues that the private banking sector has faced over the past few years have impaired its ability to have good credit growth: Rajnish Kumar of State Bank of India
10:39 AM
BS Banking Round Table
If deleveraging happens, the credit growth obviously will be muted: Rajnish Kumar of State Bank of India
10:35 AM Edelweiss Securities on inflation data
CPI inflation for November 2017, at 4.9%, came in much higher than the expected 4.4% and 130bps higher than previous month. The spurt over the previous month was essentially led by the sharp and unexpected spike in fruits and vegetables, which almost fully explains the jump in food inflation from 2.2% to 4.4%. Ex-fruits/vegetables, food inflation remained extremely subdued at 1.2%. At core CPI (ex-commodities) level, inflation jumped 40bps led by rise in HRA allowance, healthcare and household requisites. Going ahead, while we expect pressure on core CPI to ease a bit given reduction in GST rates in November, but given the unexpected spike in vegetable prices (which could persist for 1-2 months), headline CPI could range between 5-5.5% over next few months. This is clearly much above the RBI’s projections of 4.3-4.7%. Still, we think that inflation dynamics remains benign with weak pricing power and generally benign global food prices.
10:24 AM
Buzzing stock
Shares of the companies engaged in Direct to Home (DTH) television operating business were in focus, surging by up to 7% in an otherwise subdued market after the global private equity firm Warburg Pincus planning to acquire up to 20% stake in Bharti Airtel’s DTH arm Bharti Telemedia for $350 million.
READ MORE10:07 AM Markets check
At 10:00 am, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 33,195, down 32 points, while the broader Nifty50 was ruling at 10,232, down 7 points.
Source: BSE
9:55 AM
BS Banking Round Table
In round 1, Chairman of SBI, MDs & CEOs of ICICI Bank and Union Bank of India, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank and former Deputy Governor, RBI, K C Chakrabarty come together to discuss the future of banking.
In round 2, CTO of ICICI Bank, Chairman of Payments Council of India, Digital Banking Head of Axis Bank, Regional MD, FIS and MD & CEO of Infrasoft Tech join for a discussion on the future of digital payments.
9:51 AM
Global equity market outlook
We expect 2018 to be a potentially pivotal year for global equity markets. The global economy should continue to hum along, with both developed and emerging markets maintaining their momentum. However, we expect the era of cheap money will slowly draw to a close, bringing with it new uncertainties.
Global equity markets broadly appear to be pricing in significant earnings growth, but some regions such as Europe and Asian emerging markets were more attractively valued than their US counterparts as of late 2017, making it increasingly important for investors to focus on individual company fundamentals
(Source: Stephen H. Dover, Executive Vice President, Head of Equities, Franklin Templeton Investments Chief Investment Officer, Templeton Emerging Markets)
9:48 AM
Industrial growth slows; retail inflation at 15-month high
Worrying signs surfaced on the industrial growth and inflation fronts on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the official data showed economic growth rose 6.3 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year as against 5.7 per cent in the first.
READ FULL REPORT HERE 9:47 AM
Edelweiss on Bharti Airtel
We attended Bharti Airtel’s (Bharti) analyst meet held at Uganda, Africa. Key takeaways: 1) rationalisation of network, leveraging improvement in coverage and capacity with launch of 3G in 900MHz band, and rationalisation of SG&A costs has led to margin improvement, and is sustainable; 2) higher tower sharing by operators is necessary for further improvement in margins; 3) Bharti is targeting increased bundle sales to improve ARPUs; 4) capex is likely to increase to $600-800mn for investments towards 3G/4G expansion; 5) opportunity in Africa remains strong with favourable demographics, high urbanisation, low mobile penetration; and 6) Bharti is in the fray for acquiring Etisalat’s Nigerian operations, which on successful operations will boost EBITDA due to synergies. Maintain ‘BUY’ with TP of Rs 625 on industry consolidation that will trigger structural improvement in profitability
9:46 AM
HSBC's view on CPI, IIP
The growth-inflation mix continues to remain worrying and isn't encouraging for the central bank to move rates on either side. The possibility that the RBI could cut rates has substantially receded with greater upside risks looming over the inflation trajectory for remaining FY18.
Under these uncertainties, the RBI's neutral stance and commitment to remain watchful of incoming data are thought to be highly appropriate. We therefore expect the RBI to keep the repo rate on hold at 6% in the foreseeable future. Also, we expect FY18 growth to be weaker at 6.5%, compared to the 6.7% estimate of the central bank
9:45 AM
Emkay Global on macro data
Retail inflation in Nov'17 increased to 4.9% yoy, however it is higher than our expectation of 4.5%. Overall build up in inflation remained strong and was broad based. Food inflation particularly vegetables inched up further this month, this trend will further intensify in Dec-Jan'18 as the last year's base of demonetization sets in. We maintain our view of hardening inflation outlook to 5.2% on an average in Q4FY18. This might prompt RBI to withdraw 25bps rate cut announced in Aug'17 by the year end
9:42 AM
Nifty outlook by Angel Broking
The Nifty has slipped below Monday’s low of 10,282.05 on a closing basis and thereby signals further weakness towards 10,180-10,150. On the upside, 10,329-10,410 now becomes a stiff resistance zone. We continue to advise remaining light and avoiding fresh longs until mentioned resistances are not broken.
9:32 AM Sectoral trend in the opening trade
Source: NSE
9:23 AM Sensex heatmap at open
Source: BSE
9:19 AM
Markets check
At 9:18 am, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 33,163, down 65 points, while the broader Nifty50 was ruling at 10,217, down 23 points.
Source: BSE
9:13 AM
Stocks in news
Bharti Airtel, Ashok Leyland, Reliance Industries, Syndicate Bank, Punj Lloyd, Asian Paints and Infosys etc
9:10 AM
Will December be the month for bears?
Purely in terms of supply-demand, if there's more money chasing the same number of stocks, prices will rise. Vice-versa, if there is less money, prices will fall. More money has been chasing the same stocks for quite a while. The number of investible stocks has increased but investment inflows have increased much faster.
READ FULL ANALYSIS 9:03 AM
Technical calls by Prabhudas Lilladher
BUY ABAN OFFSHORE
CMP: Rs 205.50
TARGET: Rs 224
STOP LOSS: Rs 194
8:59 AM
Buy KSB Pumps
CMP: Rs 897
SL: Rs 850
Target: Rs 1000
8:56 AM
Nifty outlook by HDFC Securities
In the period of December 6, 2017 to December 11, 2017, Nifty recovered sharply from 10,033 to 10329 in the span of just three sessions. However, lower top and lower bottom formation is still intact on the Nifty daily chart, indicating the profit-booking taking place on rise. on Wednesday, Nifty corrected more than 80 points, which does not indicate any change in a trend but we need to observe if Nifty forms higher bottom or not. Higher bottom above 10,030, followed by higher top above 10,329 would violate the bearish setup for Nifty and in that case we may see Nifty forming new all time high above 10,490. Any level below 10,033 may create further panic.
8:53 AM
Today's picks
Devangshu Datta on Nifty, Bank Nifty, BPCL, Sun Pharma and Tata Steel
8:49 AM
Wall Street on Tuesday
The S&P 500 and the Dow industrials registered record closing highs on Tuesday with a boost from bank stocks as investors eyed a potential cut in U.S. corporate taxes and continued economic growth after strong inflation data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 118.77 points, or 0.49% to 24,504.8, the S&P 500 gained 4.12 points, or 0.15% to 2,664.11 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.76 points, or 0.19% to 6,862.32.
8:48 AM Asian markets
Asian shares were treading water in early trade on Wednesday as crude oil futures steadied after a selloff, while a widely expected interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve underpinned the dollar.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was a few ticks higher in early trade.
Japan's Nikkei stock index edged down slightly, shrugging off data that showed Japanese core machinery orders rose a more-than-expected 5% in October in a sign of resilient capital spending.
8:47 AM
Singapore Nifty
At 8:45 am, SGX Nifty was trading at 10,239, down 17 points or 0.17%, indicating lower opening for the markets.
8:47 AM Good Morning!
Welcome to Business Standard's market liveblog.
First Published: Wed, December 13 2017. 11:54 IST
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