Fitch Ratings downgraded its credit rating on struggling Finnish handset maker Nokia to junk status due to dwindling market share, and said the outlook remained negative.
Fitch on Tuesday cut its rating on Nokia to BB+ from BBB- and said this could be downgraded further unless the company’s business showed improvements over the second half of 2012 and in 2013.
Reuters
Fitch on Tuesday cut its rating on Nokia to BB+ from BBB- . Reuters
The Supreme Court will on Tuesday resume hearing on a petition moved by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy against Union Home Minister P Chidambaram in connection with the 2G spectrum allocation scam.
Swamy has been demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the Union Home Minister and making him a co-accused in the case.
Facebook will buy a portion of AOL patents from Microsoft for $550 million, it was announced Monday. The software giant had bought the patents from AOL recently.
“Today’s agreement with Microsoft represents an important acquisition for Facebook,” Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a joint statement of the two companies.
“This is another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook ‘s interests over the long term,” Xinhua quoted Ullyot as saying.
US stocks slipped Monday as investors were concerned about new developments in Europe’s debt crisis and political turmoil.
The European PMI data declined to 47.4 in March, suggesting a shrinking economy in euro zone countries. Meanwhile, the HSBC China PMI showed that China’s manufacturing sector contracted at a slower rate in April, Xinhua reported.
Investors were somewhat relieved but were still concerned that China’s economy might slow down for quite a while in the future.
British consumer spending power continued to slow in March, dropping by 1.1 percent compared to a year earlier reaching the lowest level since February 2011, Lloyds TSB bank said in a report Monday.
This equates to 113 pounds ($181.7) less spent on non-essential items a year, the report said. Meanwhile, spending on essential items rose to 6.2 percent, the fastest rate in over a year, largely driven by an increase in expenditure on food and drink, gas and electricity and debt repayment, Xinhua reported.
India Post is offering a six percent discount on gold coins on the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya across its 31 designated post offices in the national capital.
“You are entitled to a flat discount on the purchase of gold coins of any denomination. The coins are available in denominations of 0.5, 1, 5, 8, 10, 20 and 50 gm of 24 carat with 99.99 percent purity,” the ministry of communications and IT said in a statement.
Currently, 10 gram of gold is priced at Rs.28,000, compared to Rs.22,000 during the like period of the previous year.
Telecom regulator TRAI on Monday proposed a steep minimum price for auction of 2G telecom spectrum, setting off fears of a hike in mobile phone tariffs which are at present among the cheapest in the world.
The regulator, whose recommendations are not binding on the government, valued 2G spectrum at about Rs 7 lakh crore, nearly seven times more than Rs 1.04 lakh crore that the government had received through auction of 3G spectrum in 2010.
Private sector lender Yes Bank today announced its foray into Gold Bullion distribution market under the brand name ‘Yes Swarn’. ‘….with this launch, we aim to further the value addition through a more comprehensive retail portfolio of products for our valued Yes Bank customer,’ Yes Bank Md & CEO Dr Rana Kapoor said in a satatement here.
Jailed former communications minister Andimuthu Raja is not very keen on getting out on bail because he would prefer to walk out of prison with “clean hands” in the 2G spectrum allotment controversy that has dominated national attention for over a year.
In an exclusive interview to a news agency, Raja maintained his “innocence” and said he was concentrating on cross-examining the prosecution witnesses, but didn’t elaborate on the case which is pending before a special court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
A stable tax policy coupled with constant availability of tax sops and incentives with a reasonable time frame is the most important factor concerning Special Economic Zone (SEZ) developers/co-developers and units, apex industry body ASSOCHAM said on Sunday.
Anomalies in every budget vis-à-vis promised tax breaks and stimulus for SEZs might discourage investors owing to blemished implementation of originally intended legislation thereby hurting the credibility of the SEZ policy, said the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).
In the face of US sanctions on Iran, India has significantly reduced its oil imports from the country, though rising oil prices have caused immense problems for the Indian economy, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here Sunday.
India was currently buying about 14 million tonnes of crude from Iran, he said, “though in terms of percentage it has been reduced substantially, because currently our import is roughly about 160-170 million tonnes.”
India is concerned about the volatility in the prices of oil, gas and other commodities as they were not aligned to economic fundamentals, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Sunday.
“As a major commodity importer, India is very concerned about the increase and the volatility of commodity prices, especially oil, in recent times that seem to be not aligned with underlying economic fundamentals,” he said at a meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers and central bank governors here.
Helped by a huge cash pile of over Rs 70,000 crore, corporate giant Reliance Industries has become a debt-free entity — a feat its billionaire chief Mukesh Ambani had promised to achieve about ten months ago.
At the end of last financial year ended March 31, 2012, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) had total cash balance of Rs 70,252 crore (USD 13.8 billion), as against an outstanding debt of Rs 68,259 crore (USD 13.4 billion) — making the country’s most valued firm debt free on a net cash basis.
Ailing Air India, which would get equity infusion of Rs 30,000 crore till 2021 as part of its turnaround plan, expects to wipe off its losses and become cash positive in the next five-six years, official sources said Sunday.
The airline, which would get an upfront equity infusion of Rs 6,750 crore this financial year, estimates that it would slash its current yearly operating loss of Rs 1,700 crore to just Rs 23 crore in five years and become cash positive by 2018, top Air India officials said.
Rejecting criticism that the UPA is not serious on reforms, the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday said it is now time for the Government to take some hard decisions and expressed confidence that three key legislations on pension, banking and insurance will be passed this year.
Speaking at a Washington-based think-tank, he said Government is committed to economic reforms and has, in fact, initiated the process of legislative and administrative changes on a number of issues that would benefit the economy.
The International Monetary Fund says it has raised more than USD 430 billion in an effort to assure finance markets that it has sufficient firepower to handle any new problems from Europe’s prolonged debt crisis.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde announced the new figure at the conclusion of the discussions among finance officials of the Group of 20 major economic powers on Friday. She said that some countries including Russia, India, China and Brazil had made private pledges but did not want to issue public commitments until they had conferred with officials in their home capitals.
Shifting from Google’s CEO to executive chairman proved to be lucrative career move for Eric Schmidt.
Google awarded Schmidt a compensation package valued at USD 101 million last year, according to a Friday regulatory filing. The amount is 322 times higher than the USD 313,219 package that Schmidt received in 2010 during his final full year as the Internet search leader’s CEO.
Schmidt, 56, ended a decade-long stint as Google’s CEO last April and turned over the job to Google co-founder Larry Page.
Janata Patrty President Subramanian Swamy Friday told the Supreme Court that Home Minister P. Chidambaram as the then finance minister had given his nod for the allocation of extra spectrum to service providers even before they had fulfilled their roll out obligations.
In 1997, then civil aviation minister C.M. Ibrahim acted under pressure from Jet Airways to thwart the Tata group’s bid to start an airline in India in association with Singapore Airlines, a former top bureaucrat has said in a tell-all book.
“The history of civil aviation in this country would have taken a different trajectory, if Tata Singapore Airlines had been allowed to float an airline,” wrote M.K. Kaw, the civilian aviation secretary in the government of prime minister I.K. Gujral.
India’s GSM subscriber base grew by 1.04 percent in March with addition of 6.87 million mobile phone users, with Bharti Airtel alone signing up over 2.5 million customers, according to data released by Cellular Operators Association of India.
The total number of GSM subscribers in the country crossed 664 million as against 657.22 million in February.
Airtel currently has 181.28 million subscribers.
Idea Cellular followed Airtel by adding 2 million subscribers to have a total number of 112.72 million subscribers.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday, reflecting concerns in the US business community, pressed Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for reassurances India remains open to foreign investment, a US Treasury Department spokeswoman said.
“In this regard, the Secretary noted that certain tax provisions in India’s fiscal year 2013 budget have raised significant concern amongst US industry and dampened enthusiasm about India’s investment climate,” Treasury spokeswoman Kara Alaimo said in an email.
Japan could fall out of the league of developed nations by 2050 as a shrinking and greying population as well as slowing productivity make its economy contract, a think tank has warned.
The 21st Century Public Policy Institute said a dwindling workforce, caused by a chronic low birthrate, will combine with lower savings and shriveling investment to drag the once mighty economy down.
Microsoft produced a surprisingly strong quarter to start the year, pleasing investors looking forward to even bigger things from the software maker’s much-anticipated overhaul of Windows operating system next fall.
The performance announced Thursday defied the conventional thinking that Microsoft would have trouble selling more Windows licenses as more people snapped up tablet computers, such as Apple Inc.’s trendsetting iPad, while other prospective personal computer buyers delayed making their purchases until the next version of Microsoft’s operating system hits the market.
The government on Thursday said it expects the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to notify the budget announcement of allowing the cash-strapped Indian civil aviation sector to borrow up to $1 billion in external loans for a period of one year within seven days.
“RBI is expected to issue a relevant circular or notification giving effect to the aforesaid budget announcement within seven days,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Around 3,100 petrol bunks of IOC, BPCL and HPCL across Tamil Nadu will not function on April 23 in protest against the delay in revising the commission of petroleum dealers as per the recommendations of a committee set up by the Ministry of Petroleum.
Rajasthan Petroleum Dealers’ Association (RPDA) on Wednesday held a meeting and decided to keep petrol pumps closed for 24 hours on April 23.
In fact, petrol pumps are likely to remain closed throughout the country on the day as the Federation of All India Petroleum Traders (FAIPT) has decided to go on one-day strike.