State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest bank, became even larger with the merger of its five commercial banking subsidiaries on April 1, 2017.
Leading up to the All Fool’s Day merger, in mid-February 2017, finance minister Arun Jaitley was confident the step would make the bank a global player; a month...
Hemindra Hazari 23/MAY/2017
Recently, Axis Bank and Yes Bank jolted the Indian banking community while releasing their annual results. Both banks disclosed a staggeringly large divergence between the banks’ audited accounts and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) findings regarding bad loans on the books of these banks...
The systemic erosion of public institutions indicates that Vinod Rai, a roaring tiger, has been reduced to a caged parrot, and the BBB’s expiry date is fast approaching. Perhaps the BCCI will turn out to be a more absorbing engagement than the nation’s public sector banks.
Hemindra Hazari BANKING BUSINESS ECONOMY 12/APR/2017
Uday Kotak’s much hyped press conference on March 29 promised a bang. But all we got was a whimper. Kotak’s announcement was a new digital-based saving account, christened “811”, no doubt in honour of the Modi government’s demonetisation move, which was announced on November...
Hemindra Hazari 27 March 2017
Can half the workforce of rural India be considered “marginal to the economy”? That, it appears, is what Lord Meghnad Desai, eminent economist, Gujarat-born and UK-naturalised Labour life peer and Indian Express columnist, believes.
Desai has had a notable academic career, earning his doctorate at the University of...
Hemindra Hazari 20 March 2017
After the BJP’s decisive victory in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) state elections, alarm bells have started tolling in the capital market.
The primary cause for concern is the BJP’s promise to the UP electorate to waive off all farm loans and provide fresh loans at zero percent interest. Capital market...
Hemindra Hazari 4 March 2017
Axis Bank has had a tough year. Just as it was slowly recovering from the demonetisation fiasco, wherein some of its officials were arrested for money laundering, its non-watch list corporate loans slipped into the non-performing category in the third quarter of FY’2017. In the last month, news...
Hemindra Hazari 17 February 2017
Historically, India’s net oil subsidy was nothing but a myth after factoring in taxes on petroleum products. But in the last two years, as oil prices declined internationally, the government went further and shifted to an oppressive regime of punitive oil taxes. In earlier years,...
Hemindra Hazari
The Economic Survey is the flagship document of the Ministry of Finance, presented by the finance minister to parliament on a day prior to the release of the Union Budget. This prestigious economic document is the responsibility of the chief economic adviser to the Indian government and is widely...
Hemindra Hazari
In the run-up to the upcoming Budget, shares on the stock market have rallied, raising hopes of the long delayed revival in private sector capital expenditure and corporate earnings. But against the backdrop of an already slowing economy followed by the ill-conceived, disastrously executed demonetisation, might this be...
