1. Star India Wins IPL Media Rights for Rs 16,350 Crore for 5 Seasons
Star India Pvt Ltd won television, digital, Indian, and global media rights to the India Premier League (IPL) for the next five seasons for Rs 16,347.50 crore, outbidding rivals such as Sony Pictures Networks India, Facebook Inc, and Bharti Airtel Ltd.
This effectively puts IPL in the top tier of global leagues such as the UK’s Premier League and the National Basketball Association in the US. And it gives Star, the Twentieth Century Fox company which already has TV rights to all tournaments organized by the International Cricket Council, including the Cricket World Cup, and all matches organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), a virtual stranglehold over all cricket media rights in India.
“IPL is a very popular property and we believe a lot more value can be created for the fan across TV and digital,” Star India chief executive Uday Shankar said at a press conference in Mumbai shortly after the results were announced.
Source: Livemint
Also Read: Star India Bag IPL Media Rights For Rs 16,347 Cr for Next 5 Years
2. Zomato in Talks With Alibaba's Ant Financial for up to $200 Million Funding
Food ordering and restaurant discovery platform Zomato Media Pvt Ltd is in talks with China’s payments giant Ant Financial Services Group to raise $100 to $200 million, three people familiar with the matter said.
The deal, which hasn’t been finalised, may value Zomato at between $800 million and $900 million, said two of the three people cited above. The third person said Zomato’s valuation may exceed $1 billion. All three declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. Zomato has been in the market to raise funds since the beginning of the year.
The firm declined to comment. Ant Financial, which is the payments business connected with China’s largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Source: Livemint
3. Tata Motors’ CTO Tim Leverton Calls It Quits
Tim Leverton, the man who rejuvenated the passenger vehicles line-up for Tata Motors has chosen to “disengage” from the company and relocate to the UK for “personal reasons.” The announcement by Tata Motors on 4 September came as a surprise to many people in the industry.
“Timothy (Tim) Leverton, president and chief technical officer, has decided to disengage from his services in the organisation as he wishes to relocate back to the UK for personal reasons,” the company in a statement the company in a statement said.
Leverton has been associated with Tata Motors since 2010, working from out of the Tata Motors Engineering Research Centre in Pune.
Source: Economic Times
4. Infosys Promoters, Including Murthy, Nilekani, Offer Shares Worth Rs 2,038 Crore for Buyback
Infosys promoters, including iconic co-founders NR Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani, have offered to sell as many as 1.77 crore shares – worth up to Rs 2,038 crore – in the company’s Rs 13,000 crore buyback offer.
The promoters group – which includes most of the founders and their families – have expressed their intention to be part of the company's first buyback plan in its over three-decade history and have offered to tender a maximum of 1.77 crore shares.
At a buyback price of Rs 1,150 per share, this could mean a windfall of Rs 2,038.94 crore for the promoter group, if all the shares tendered by them are accepted in the buyback offer.
Source: Economic Times
5. ONGC to Borrow Rs 25,000 Crore to Fund HPCL Buy
Cash rich Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) will raise its first debt ever of Rs 25,000 crore, to part fund the Rs 37,000 crore acquisition of government’s stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL).
India’s largest oil and gas producer has about Rs 13,000 crore in cash and would need to borrow the rest to fund the buying of government’s 51.11 percent stake in HPCL.
ONGC has sought shareholder approval for “borrowing/raising funds in Indian rupee and/or foreign currency by issue of debt instruments (including bonds, non-convertible debentures and notes) in domestic and/or overseas market” of Rs 25,000 crore.
The borrowings would be for “acquisition of projects/equity shares and/or going concerns, meeting capital expenditure, working capital requirements and general corporate purposes during the period commencing from the date of passing of Special Resolution till completion of twelve months thereof or the date of the next annual general meeting in the financial year 2018-19, whichever is earlier,” the company said in a shareholder resolution.
Source: The Hindu Business Line
6. Paytm Creates Rs 1,000-Crore War Chest for Festive Sales
Planning to make a splash this festive season for its first major sale, Paytm Mall, owned by Paytm Ecommerce Pvt Ltd, has prepared a Rs 1,000-crore war chest.
The recently-launched online mall app has brought in over 1,000 brand stores and 15,000 brand-authorised retailers, selling over 65 million products.
Since this is the company’s first festival season sale since launch, it is aggressively getting shopkeepers and brand authorised stores on board to offer better buying experience and faster deliveries.
Source: Business Standard
7. One Year on, RJio Upbeat About Digital Services, Robust Data Demand
When Mukesh Ambani launched Reliance Jio’s telecom services exactly a year ago, he had spelt out two clear targets for the company – to make data services affordable to the masses and to disrupt the sector in a way that democratises the internet. A year later, RJio has done all this and more.
Users on RJio network consumes more data than the combined usage on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the US. We clearly did not expect such a response from Indian users when we started out. But this is just the beginning of what we have to do.Top company official
RJio now has over 120 million customers and 10 percent market share within just one year.
Source: The Hindu Business Line
8. SC Stays Insolvency Action Against Jaypee Infratech on Homebuyers' Plea
The Supreme Court on 4 September stayed insolvency proceedings against Jaypee Infratech on a plea by homebuyers, according to a Bloomberg report.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra issued a notice to the central and Uttar Pradesh governments, the report said. The bench will hear the matter on 10 October.
The original board of Jaypee Infratech Ltd is restored and all consumer cases will now go as usual, said Abhishek Dubey, secretary of Jaypee Residents Welfare Association, one of the petitioners. “The plan of Gaurs (the promoters of Jaypee Infratech) to take cover under insolvency has failed.” “No one imagined an insolvency process could be stalled. Indian courts are courts of law and equity. Where law failed, equity prevailed,” he added.
Read the full story on The Quint.
9. One Year Of Urjit Patel: Some Tough Love For Banks
Soon after Urjit Patel took over as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in September 2016, he met with top officials of commercial banks. The purpose of the meeting, as bankers later explained, was to better understand what they felt was ailing the sector and what the regulator could do to improve it.
According to bankers who were part of that meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Patel listened intently to all the representations made. And bankers came away with the impression that Patel may be sympathetic to their concerns that the bad loan clean-up was moving too fast.
An asset quality review of the sector had been initiated by former Governor Raghuram Rajan between October and December 2015. With the RBI detecting unreported stress, banks were pushed to classify bad loans appropriately.
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