Rise With Profit: New RBI Governor, Vodafone Idea's Fundraise Plans, AMFI Data | Podcast

This is the daily morning update from NDTV Profit. Over the next few minutes, we’ll bring you up to speed with everything you need to know to start your day ahead of the curve.

Listen to this as a podcast here.

The big news at the start—India is set to have a new Reserve Bank of India Governor. The government yesterday appointed Sanjay Malhotra, who is currently the revenue secretary in the Ministry of Finance to take over from Shaktikanta Das, whose term ends today.

Das is the second-longest serving RBI Governor after Benegal Rama Rau’s seven-plus year term. He was first appointed as governor in December 2018 and has helped the central bank navigate through the challenging Covid-19 pandemic. His last action as governor will have been to chair the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee last week, where the RBI decided to keep policy rates unchanged, but to improve banking system liquidity through a cut in the cash reserve ratio for banks.

Malhotra brings with him a wealth of experience, having worked across sectors over the last 33 years. He has served the government in power, finance, taxation, information technology and mining. He has also been Secretary in the Department of Financial Services in the ministry of Finance.

Before we get to the other news from back home, let’s address global markets. Equities on Wall Street saw a bit of a slide overnight, led by tech stocks. The Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 dropped 0.6% each and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell close to 250 points. The fall in tech stocks was led by Nvidia Corp., which fell about 2.5% after China’s market regulator launched an investigation into the company over suspected violation of an anti-monopoly law. That’s based on a Reuters report.

Investors will remain cautious ahead of the consumer price index data that will be released on Wednesday and then the producer price index data on Thursday. The inflation data will have a bearing on the next decision of the Federal Open Market Committee on Dec. 17 and 18—next week.

In the Asia Pacific region, the mood seems to be largely positive, despite the weak handover from Wall Street. Investors will be reacting to statements by China’s Politburo yesterday. The policymaking body in China recommended a “more proactive” fiscal policy and “moderately loose” monetary policy in the new year. This will likely be seen as a significant statement of intent by the government, to bolster flagging growth and to counter deflation and a damaging slump in the property market.

Turning to news from back home—GST officers have detected cases of input tax credit or ITC evasion of Rs 35,132 crore by 17,818 fake firms between April-October and arrested 69 persons, the government informed Parliament on Monday.

The cases of evasion were found during a coordinated special drive that was conducted between Aug. 16 and Oct. 30 to detect fake firms, according to the written reply by Pankaj Chaudhary, the minister of state for Finance.

In corporate news, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance saw new business premium grow more than two-fold year-on-year in November, on the back of a rise in the group yearly renewable premium. The new business premium stood at Rs 3,222 crore last month, up from just under Rs 1,300 crore a year ago.

Vodafone Idea Ltd. will raise up to Rs 1,980 crore via share sale on a preferential basis to entities within the UK parent Vodafone Group Plc. The board on Monday gave its approval to sell 175 crore shares to Omega Telecom Holdings Pvt. and Usha Martin Telematics Ltd. The shares will be issued at Rs 11.28 per equity share, according to an exchange filing.

In other news, Bharat Forge has raised Rs 1,650 crore via qualified institutional placement of shares on Monday. The QIP opened for bidding last week.

In key data to watch out for today, there’s the latest data on inflows into mutual funds. That’ll be released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India or AMFI around noon.

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