QBiz: Breach Costs Yahoo $50 Mn; Kochhar’s Clean Chit Withdrawn
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1. Yahoo to Pay $50 Million, Other Costs for Massive Security Breach
Yahoo has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the biggest security breach in history.
The restitution hinges on federal court approval of a settlement filed late on Monday, 22 October in a 2-year-old lawsuit seeking to hold Yahoo accountable for digital burglaries that occurred in 2013 and 2014, but weren’t disclosed until 2016. It adds to the financial fallout from a security lapse that provided a mortifying end to Yahoo’s existence as an independent company and former CEO Marissa Mayer’s six-year reign.
Yahoo revealed the problem after it had already negotiated a $4.83 billion deal to sell its digital services to Verizon Communications.It then had to discount that price by $350 million to reflect its tarnished brand and the specter of other potential costs stemming from the breach.
(Source: The Financial Express)
2. GST Return Filing: Companies Staring At Huge Loss Of Tax Credit
Reconciliation of what a buyer bought and a seller sold was supposed to be the bedrock of availing input tax credit under the Goods and Services Tax. The absence of a mechanism that would’ve enabled taxpayers to reconcile invoices may now lead to the loss of significant amount of tax credit, experts told BloombergQuint.
Input tax credit means that a supplier can reduce the tax paid on inputs from tax payable on outward supplies.
The Due Date Confusion
According to the Central GST Act, a taxpayer can avail input tax credit in a fiscal up to the due date of filing returns for September or the annual return, whichever is earlier. For instance, for the year ended March 2018, the last date for availing input tax credit was 20 October – the date of filing returns for September.
(Source: Bloomberg Quint)
3. HCL Gen-Next Roshni Nadar Appointed Vice-Chairman of HCL Tech
HCL, India’s third-largest IT company, is inducting the gen-next into a leadership role. Roshni Nadar Malhotra, the only daughter of founder Shiv Nadar, was on Tuesday, 23 October appointed the vice-chairman of the board of directors of HCL Tech, the $8.2 billion group’s flagship company.
A former news producer at Sky News UK, the 36-year-old Roshni – who is married and a mother of two – is currently the CEO and Executive Director of HCL Corporation, a holding company which controls HCL Tech, HCL Infosystems and HCL Healthcare. She has also been a non-executive director of HCL Tech, a position she continues to hold.
(Source: The Economic Times)
4. Q2 Earnings: HCL Tech Posts Better-Than-Expected Profit
Indian software services exporter HCL Technologies Ltd posted a 14.8% rise in second-quarter net profit, beating analysts’ estimates, helped by higher revenue from its software services business.
Net profit attributable to shareholders rose to 25.34 billion rupees ($344.43 million) in the quarter ended 30 September, from 22.07 billion rupees a year ago.
Analysts on average had expected a consolidated profit of 24.50 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv data.
Revenue from operations jumped 19.5% to 148.60 billion rupees, while revenue from the software services business rose about 21% to 87.11 billion rupees.
(Source: Livemint)
5. Q2 Results: Bajaj Finserv’s Profit Growth Slows As IL&FS Crisis Hurts
Bajaj Finserv Ltd’s net profit rose at its slowest pace in at least six quarters as non-bank lenders battled a liquidity crunch stemming from defaults by IL&FS group entities.
Net profit of the Pune-based non-bank financial company rose nearly 1 percent year-on-year to Rs 704 crore in the July-September quarter, according to its exchange filing. Net interest income, or the core income, increased 32 percent on a yearly basis to Rs 4,465.6 crore in the period.
(Source: Bloomberg Quint)
6. RBI Lifts Ban on Fino Payments Bank to Open New Accounts
After almost five months of being barred from adding new customers, Fino Payments Bank, one of India’s first payments banks has been allowed to open new accounts by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after it submitted the compliance report to the central bank.
Fino Payments Bank had been unable to enrol new customers since the end of May after RBI found the bank to be non-compliant with the operational guidelines laid down by it.
“RBI has lifted the prohibition on Fino Payments Bank to open new accounts,” said a statement from the payments bank on Tuesday, 23 October.
(Source: Livemint)
7. PayTM Extortion Case: Accused Sent to Judicial Custody
Three persons, including two PayTM employees, arrested for blackmailing and making extortion bid on the e-wallet giant’s founder Vijay Shekar Sharma were on Tuesday, 23 October remanded to 14-day judicial custody by the magistrate court in Gautam Buddh Nagar, officials said.
Noida Police on Monday arrested the PayTM CEO’s secretary Sonia Dhawan (32), her husband Roopak Jain (38) and another company employee Devendra Kumar (30) for allegedly stealing personal information and confidential data and threatening to leak it.
Their fourth associate, Rohit Chomal, who lives in Kolkata, is absconding, police said. Police Tuesday carried out searches at the residences of the three arrested and recovered a pen drive containing crucial information and call records along with a hard disk which has some personal and confidential data of the company, according to officials.
(Source: The Financial Express)
8. Law Firm Withdraws ‘Clean Chit Report’ on Ex-ICICI Bank Chanda Kochhar
Law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has withdrawn its 2016 report that had given a clean chit to former ICICI Bank Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Chanda Kochhar with regard to nepotism allegations against her, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, 23 October. ICICI Bank in a regulatory filing said the clean chit given to Kochhar in March this year was based on the inquiry report of the law firm which is now saying that the same should no longer be treated as valid.
Following the allegations of nepotism and conflict of interest against Kochhar, the then chairman MK Sharma in March had expressed full confidence in her and ruled out any quid pro quo as alleged with regard to certain loans given to the Videocon Group.
ICICI Bank in a filing said the bank had expressed confidence in Kochhar on the basis of the inquiry report of the law firm which was engaged in 2016 to probe the allegations of nepotism and conflict of interest against her.
(Source: Livemint)
9. SBI Seeks Adviser to Streamline Insolvency of 15 Videocon Firms
The State Bank of India (SBI) wants to appoint an adviser to liaison among the separate resolution professionals (RPs) and prospective bidders for the 15 Videocon group entities that it referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), according to a public notice.
The bank has mandated SBI Capital Markets to look for this “common process adviser”.
According to the notice, the adviser will need to coordinate among the committees of creditors and resolution professionals of the 15 companies and be the single point of contact for the prospective bidders on behalf of the lenders.
SBI believes this will help streamline the bidding and resolution process “to enable maximisation of value for all stakeholders of the Videocon Group Companies from the prospective resolution plan(s)”.
(Source: Livemint)