Research

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. All indicators point to a disturbing slowdown in India’s economy in recent months: the Index of Industrial Production, the Purchasing Managers’ Index, the fixed investment rate, and even GDP. Farm prices have collapsed, resulting in negative growth in value added in agriculture; real rural wages have slumped;...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. An internal memo of an anonymous former senior official of ICICI Bank’s risk management department, publicised by the Indian Express, provides a damning indictment of the credit appraisal and monitoring processes at the bank. It reveals how basic banking processes were violated, and public and shareholder funds...

The pitifully situation in sell-side research is on account of their inability to publicly question or even condemn the management of the companies they cover and expose accounting fraud, mismanagement and mis-governance.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Post the announcement of HDFC Bank’s results, the sell-side rejoiced and the overwhelming majority reaffirmed their bullish stance on the stock, which has handsomely rewarded shareholders in its quarter century of existence. The perennially bullish sell-side has been disregarding the cautions of Daniel Tabbush, one of...

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...

HDFC Asset Management Co. (HDFC AMC), promoted by HDFC is in the news for all the wrong reasons, a rare situation for a blue-blooded group which is the darling of institutional investors. The only saving grace is that it is not the only AMC which has been impacted...

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval of the selection of Amitabh Chaudhry, the then HDFC Standard Life Insurance Chief Executive Officer (CEO), as the Axis Bank CEO on August 8, 2018, and his taking charge on January 1, 2019, were celebrated by the market. Analysts and...

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...

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...