Substantial profit booking across sectors, particularly commodities, led the key indices in Indian equity markets to close deep in the red in today's session. The announcement by the US Fed of a roll back of the quantitative easing (QE) program led to a scare about flight of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) from Indian markets. While the BSE-Sensex closed lower by 526 points, the NSE-Nifty closed lower by 166 points. The BSE Mid Cap index and the BSE Small Cap index lost about 2% each.
As regards global markets, most Asian indices closed lower today while European indices have opened higher. The rupee was trading at Rs 58.59 to the dollar at the time of writing.
As per a business daily, Cipla has received approval from the South African and Botswana competition authorities for acquisition of Medpro. The same is however subject to regulatory and government approvals. It may be noted that Cipla supplies the bulk of the South African company's drugs through a long-standing agreement. However it has never owned a stake in the Cape Town-based company. This acquisition will give Cipla a direct connect to consumers in South Africa. It also helps Cipla to integrate its marketing or front-end arm in South Africa with its manufacturing, regulatory and research units.
Meanwhile, to address funding challenges of the telecom sector, the government will set up the Telecom Finance Corporation (TFC). The government will infuse Rs 10 bn of the proposed authorised capital of Rs 100 bn in it. Further, the TFC is proposed to be set-up on the lines of sectoral finance bodies such as the Tourism Finance Corporation of India and Power Finance Corporation (PFC). The cabinet has already approved for the creation of TFC under the National Telecom Policy 2012.
The government estimates that the debt funding for telecom sector during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) will be around Rs 7.5 trillion. TFC, which will initially target 5% of this debt market, will have a loan portfolio of Rs 380 bn in 5 years, disbursing around Rs 70 bn annually. Further, TFC will target to maintain debt equity ratio of 5 times for first five year of its establishment and will operate in the interest margin of 2% to 2.5%.
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