EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Romesh Sobti, the CEO of Indusind Bank, was recently crowned ‘banker of the year’ by a fawning business media, despite reporting two consecutive years of fudged accounts (FY2016 and FY2017) and putting nearly 8% of the bank’s capital at risk in an ill-advised, unsecured loan to...
BANKING April 10, 2019
The sacked employees feel that they have been given a raw deal, which may have a demoralising impact on the bank's workforce.
By Hemindra Hazari
On April 1, 2019, the eve of Axis Bank’s 25th anniversary of commencing business, Amitabh Chaudhry, the newly anointed chief executive officer (CEO), announced one of his...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The Indian prime minister’s announcement that India had destroyed a ‘low-earth orbit’ satellite with a missile, and thus joined an elite club, suggests that the ruling party is desperate to deflect the voters’ attention from the dire economic situation in India. This desperation points to a reality...
By Hemindra Hazari
Even on their best days, India’s financial newspapers are watchdogs that rarely bark. For the most part, they prefer not to place large companies under the scanner, let alone try and fix accountability on influential promoters and powerful chief executive officers.
On March 20, 2019, Business Standard (BS) announced that...
The language used in the writ petition filed by Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) in Bombay High Court against the banking regulator should have alarmed shareholders. They would be even more apprehensive if they read the language used by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its reply. That a...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For the beleaguered non-bank finance company (NBFC) sector, banks are the single largest component of external funding. This source peaked at the end of September 2018, in the aftermath of the default of IL&FS, a private unlisted infrastructure developer and financer. However, in the beginning of the last...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Post the downing of the Indian Air Force (IAF) MIG-21 by Pakistan over its territory and the capture and subsequent return of the pilot, the narrative which was strongly in favour of Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rapidly spiralled downwards. Whether the Pakistan Air...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The air strikes launched by the Indian Air Force on Jaba Top in Balakot, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, have raised the stakes in the escalation of conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in South Asia. The stock market reaction on the morning of February 26...
