Research

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...

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...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Yes Bank is in the cross hairs of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the banking regulator. On February 13, 2019, the bank issued a press release stating that the regulator’s risk assessment report (RAR) for the year ended March 31, 2018 revealed nil divergence, i.e. the bank’s...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The ‘Interim Report of IL&FS and Its Subsidiaries’ dated November 30, 2018  by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which was submitted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), not only reveals the shenanigans of IL&FS’s senior management but also puts the spotlight...