New Delhi, August 23
After the government and RBI's vernal intervention, the rupee today made a strong recovery, snapping a six-session losing streak to rise by 135 paise and close at 63.20, its second-biggest rise in a decade in absolute terms

Talking up of the rupee by the government and the Reserve Bank of India, which came after the rupee slid to an all-time intra-day low of 65.56 yesterday, boosted sentiment and also helped local shares rally.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram yesterday said the rupee is undervalued and has overshot appropriate levels while asserting there is no need for excessive and unwarranted pessimism. The RBI said it has adequate foreign exchange reserves to deal with the declining rupee. The RBI is also learnt to have heavily sold dollars in the market.

The rupee appreciated, ending six days of losses. After bouncing back from an all-time intra-day low of 65.56 yesterday, the local currency closed at 63.30.

Mumbai, August 23
The RBI today imposed a fine of Rs 6.5 crore on six public sector banks, including IDBI Bank, Dena Bank and Indian Bank, for violation of customer identification or KYC norms and anti-money laundering guidelines.

The other three banks found to be violating KYC norms are Allahabad Bank, Bank of Maharashtra and Corporation Bank.

Dena Bank has been slapped a penalty of Rs 2 crore while Rs 1.5 crore has been imposed on Corporation Bank. IDBI Bank and Indian Bank have been slapped with penalty of Rs one crore each, where as Allahabad Bank and Bank of Maharashtra have been fined Rs 50 lakh each.

The central bank imposed the monetary penalty on the six banks “for violation of the Reserve Bank of India instructions, inter alia, on Know Your Customer/Anti Money Laundering”.

The penalty follows scrutiny of books of accounts, internal control, compliance systems and processes of these banks at their offices by the RBI during April and May 2013.

“The investigation did not reveal any prima facie evidence of money laundering. However, any conclusive inference in this regard can be drawn only by an end to end investigation of the transactions by tax and enforcement agencies," the RBI added.

The scrutiny revealed violation of regulations and instructions, like non-adherence to certain aspects of KYC) norms and anti money laundering (AML) guidelines, the RBI said.

The banks, RBI said, violated customer identification procedure, risk categorisation, KYC norms for walk in customers including for sale of third party products, omission in filing of cash transaction reports (CTRs) in respect of some cash transactions.

The scrutiny also found non-adherence to instructions which prohibit acceptance of cash above Rs 50,000 from customers for sale of gold coins and issue of Demand Drafts and instructions on permitted credits to Non-resident accounts.

Earlier also the RBI had imposed monetary penalty for almost similar violations on 25 banks, including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, SBI, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India. — PTI 

New Delhi, August 23
In a major move to become an integrated telecom player, Reliance Jio Infocomm, a unit of Reliance Industries, has applied for a mobile service licence in India. This will boost Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 4G expansion plans.

Reliance Industries and a few other players have applied for unified licence, Department of Telecom Secretary MF Farooqui confirmed today.

“Reliance Jio has applied for the unified licence,” Farooqui said on the sidelines of C-Dot foundation day function here.

Asked if the department has received applications from other players, Farooqui said: “Yes, there are a few others who have applied."”

Reliance Jio will have to pay an additional Rs 1,658 crore to the government to comply with the new unified licence guidelines, issued earlier this month.

The recently issued guidelines to migrate to the new unified licence rules will allow licensees to offer all telecommunications services under one permit. The rules also delinked licence from spectrum, meaning operators would have to buy spectrum separately.

Reliance Jio Infocomm already has permits and airwaves for BWA services across all of India's 22 service areas, and has plans to offer fourth-generation (4G) services, which offer high speed broadband.

Reports said this was the vital strategic move for Reliance Industries which has a pan-India 4G licence. The company has also been testing voice calls on these networks. It got a go ahead from the Telecom Department to test 10,000 mobile numbers to offer such voice services a few months ago.

Experts point out that Reliance Jio will spear head its data strategies with a national fibre backbone and last mile FTTH connection through Wi-Fi. The mobile licence will compliment its 4G investments. Without the licence, it would have been difficult to RIL to succeed in the Indian telecom market.

New Delhi, August 23
The government plans to offload 5-10% stake in five companies, including IOC, Engineers India (EIL) and BHEL, to achieve disinvestment target of Rs 40,000 crore in the current fiscal.

Minister of State for Finance JD Seelam said the government had approved disinvestment of 10 per cent stake each in Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Aeronautics, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) and EIL.

Also it has approved the proposal of 5 per cent stake sale in BHEL. — PTI

Mumbai, August 23
In the wake of an over three-hour technical glitch at the US bourse Nasdaq, SEBI is taking a precautionary stock of trading and risk management systems at stock exchanges in India to reassure their robustness.

While the systems in place at leading Indian bourses are considered to be robust and can withstand any possible technical glitches, it is advisable to conduct a precautionary check after an unprecedented three-hour trading halt at a large exchange like Nasdaq, a senior SEBI official said.

The capital markets regulator and the stock exchanges in India as such conduct regular tests of various risk management systems and trading platforms to ensure their stability against technical and other glitches, he added.

Trading activities were paralysed at Nasdaq yesterday "due to issues with quote dissemination" on its platform.

The exchange said the halt was due to a "connectivity issue" that has been identified and addressed, while adding that it would further investigate the issue and would take necessary steps to enhance the platform.

The US markets regulator SEC is also looking into the issues at Nasdaq, which had last year also came under fire in the wake of certain technical glitches during the IPO of social networking giant Facebook in May 2012. The exchange later paid a penalty of $10 million to SEC in that matter.

SEBI Chairman U K Sinha recently said the capital market infrastructures in India are better than those in many other countries, including some most developed economies.

“We have created market infrastructures which are world class and where trading today takes place in a much more transparent manner, which is much better than the way market functions in many other parts of the world including some really developed markets," Sinha had said.

To check stock market losses caused by technical glitches, SEBI has also made it mandatory for the brokers and traders to get their trading systems and software tools tested and audited in consultation with bourses. — PTI

New Delhi, August 23
Crisis-hit National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) today declared nine members (buyers) who failed to pay their dues on the first day of settlement on August 20 as ‘defaulters’, following directives from the commodity market regulator FMC.

“Following members have been declared as defaulters as per the rules of the exchange — (a) ARK Imports Pvt Ltd (b) Loil Overseas Foods Ltd (c) Lotus Refineries Pvt Ltd (d) N K Proteins Ltd (e) NCS Sugars Ltd (f) Spin Cot Textiles Pvt Ltd (g) Tavishi Enterprises Pvt Ltd (h) Vimladevi Agrotech Ltd (i) Yathuri Associates,” NSEL said.

NSEL, promoted by Jignesh Shah-led Financial Technologies (India) Ltd, is facing the problem of settling Rs 5,500 crore dues to 148 members/brokers, representing 13,000 investor clients, after it suspended trade on July 31 on the government direction.

The spot exchange announced a seven-month plan to settle these dues. However, NSEL was able to pay only Rs 92 crore on August 20, the first day for pay-out to investors, out of the scheduled Rs 174.72 crore.

The exchange had informed that these nine members (buyers) did not pay their instalments. — PTI

New Delhi, August 23
Global financial services major HSBC has downgraded Indian equities from "overweight" to "neutral" citing that the country would struggle to defend a falling currency and declining growth.

"We lower our weighting in India from overweight to neutral. In our view, India will continue to struggle with the trade-off between defending a currency and supporting growth," HSBC said in a research note today.

According to HSBC, the volatility in Indian markets since May can be attributed to the initial talk about tapering of bond purchase by the US Federal Reserve, but the catalyst for recent volatility in Indian equities was when policymakers decided to tighten liquidity to stem capital outflows.

Since the beginning of the current fiscal in April 2013, though the rupee valuation of the Indian stock market has fallen by 6.55%, its dollar valuation has plunged 22%.

The rupee has depreciated by over 16 per cent during this period.

“...the issue is that in many cases the authorities have taken only incremental steps to improve financing of the current account deficit in recent years. In India, the lack of structural reforms is well documented,” it said. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Action suit against iGATE dismissed
New York: A class action suit filed against iGate and Phaneesh Murthy in the US has been dismissed and neither the company nor its disgraced former CEO has made any payment in this connection, iGate said. The suit alleged that the company failed to disclose that Murthy was involved in an "improper relationship with a subordinate employee" in violation of iGates' stated policies. — PTI

RIL-BP make gas find in Cauvery basin
New Delhi: Reliance Industries and its partner supermajor BP plc on Friday said they had made a second deep-water gas condensate discovery in the Cauvery basin, off the east coast.The discovery in the Block CY-DWN-201/2 is being termed as significant as the well has been flowing about 1 million standard cubic metre per day of gas since August 17 when the discovery was made. — PTI

Tata rolls out Safari Storme Explorer
New Delhi: Tata Motors on Friday launched a new variant of its sports utility vehicle (SUV) Safari Storme with price starting at Rs 10.86 lakh (ex-showroom, New Delhi). The new edition, Tata Safari Storme Explorer, comes with customised outdoor essentials and a host of technology features, Tata Motors said. — PTI

Microsoft CEO Ballmer to retire
San Francisco: Microsoft announced on Friday that chief executive Steve Ballmer would retire within 12 months as the company searches for a successor at the helm to US tech pioneer. “There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time,” Ballmer said. — AFP