Reliance Communications gets relief from bondholders as deadline looms

Reliance Communications Ltd., the embattled Indian phone company headed by billionaire Anil Ambani, clinched the approval of its overseas bondholders to ease the carrier’s debt burden, putting the company a step closer to averting bankruptcy.
The Indian phone operator, which defaulted last year on a $300-million bond, got 83 percent of bondholders to approve the plan, the company said in an exchange filing.

The vote was crucial for Ambani because settling the matter was a precondition for RCom to reorganise its larger local debt. The company has been working against the clock to reach agreements with all its creditors by Aug. 27 or face insolvency proceedings.
RCom is also in the midst of completing its sale of airwaves, towers and fiber to a rival controlled by Ambani’s older brother, who’s India’s richest man. The brothers wrapped up a smaller deal involving transmission nodes, worth 20 billion rupees, on Aug. 23.

Why Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, not Walmart, is Amazon's real rival in India

It’s time the Amazon.com Inc. boss took notice of his real rival in India, the only billion-strong consumer market open to Western tech firms. While Walmart Inc.’s acquisition this year of Flipkart, a homegrown e-tailer, might have given the impression that the battle for India would be an all-American contest, a new national e-commerce policy doing the rounds in New Delhi should disabuse Bezos of that notion.

If the draft policy becomes a law, the oil-to-telecom tycoon who’s India’s richest man will emerge as the most formidable challenger to the wealthiest person on the planet.

The core contest comes down to warehouses. Foreign-funded firms aren’t allowed to hold e-commerce inventory in India. That’s a disadvantage for Amazon since it prevents the firm from fully capitalizing on the strengths of its vaunted logistics operation, seen as one of its most decisive edges in the US.

Amazon was hoping that those rules would be loosened but the proposed policy instead calls for harsh controls on even the phantom sellers that Amazon and Flipkart have been using to get around the no-inventory problem. If the new policy is strictly implemented, Amazon and its preferred resellers, won’t be able to offer deep discounts.

TCS beats Reliance Industries, becomes India's most valued company again

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Wednesday reclaimed the country's most valued firm status by market capitalisation, pushing Reliance Industries Ltd to the second spot.

Reliance Industries (RIL) on Tuesday became the country's most valued firm by m-cap, replacing Tata Group's crown jewel TCS from the top slot.

However, RIL's reign was short-lived as it slipped to the second spot in the m-cap ranking with a market valuation of Rs 7.54 trillion on BSE on Wednesday.

On the other hand, the m-cap of TCS stood at Rs 7.56 trillion, which is Rs 14.08 billion more than that of RIL's valuation.

Shares of TCS rose 1.74 per cent to settle at Rs 1,975.10 on BSE and RIL gained 0.45 per cent to end the day at Rs 1,191.15.

TCS had first replaced RIL as the most valued firm more than five years ago.

The IT major in mid-June become the first Indian company to close the trading session with a market valuation of over Rs 7 trillion.

CAG raps MMRDA for non-recovery of Rs 7.7 bn dues from Reliance Industries

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pulled up the MMRDA for non-recovery of Rs 7.7 billiion dues from Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), India's largest private sector company.

The CAG report, tabled in Maharashtra Legislature today, said Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority is yet to recover Rs 8.55 billion froms RIL and Starlight Systems Private Limited, as lease premium dues on additional built up area allowed to the lessees in Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla Complex.

The report said MMRDA also gave "undue favour" to RIL by not recovering additional premium and interest to the tune of Rs 4.28 billion for delay in construction in contravention to the terms and conditions of the lease deed and the premium.

It said MMRDA has been regularly recovering full additional premium, including interest, in respect of other allottees who had delayed construction of structures within the time specified in the lease deed. Therefore, the undue favour shown by the authority to Reliance industries in this regard is inexplicable, the CAG said.

News digest: Bharat-22 ETF, GST rate cut, Mallya's trial, and more

SoftBank set to take driver's seat in Ola

Japanese investment giant SoftBank is close to acquiring an additional 10-12 per cent stake in ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola, to increase its holding in the ride-hailing firm to around 50 per cent ahead of its planned investment in global rival Uber. SoftBank will pay between $400 million and $500 million to Tiger Global, the second-largest backer of Ola, to give the US firm a partial exit, people familiar with the development told Business Standard on condition of anonymity. Read more

Reliance Industries, Adani, REC issue $1.7-billion bonds

Reliance Industries, Adani Abbot Point Terminal, and Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) on Monday launched bond issues overseas worth $1.7 billion in order to reduce their finance costs. The bond issues follow last week’s upgrade by Moody’s of India’s sovereign rating from the lowest investment grade Baa3 to a notch higher at Baa2. The agency has also upgraded the ratings of several public sector companies such as State Bank of India, Indian Oil Corporation, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, and NTPC as well as those of private sector lender HDFC Bank. Read more

Vijay Mallya's extradition trial confirmed from December 4

Vijay Mallya, 61, the beleaguered Indian businessman facing an extradition demand from the Indian government in a British court, will fight the attempt to drag him back to India not just on the issue of poor prison conditions in India, but on the alleged demerits of New Delhi’s argument. Read more
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Jio, Airtel spar over interconnect issue

Latest News - A fresh round of war of words broke out between Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel on Monday, with the former alleging that its service continues to face congestion issues with some of the large operators, including Airtel, not providing adequate points of interconnection (PoI) — a charge the incumbent operator refuted.

Reliance Industries (RIL) in a statement said its telecom subsidiary Jio has garnered 72.4 million subscribers within four months of commencement of services but continues to face congestion issues as interconnect capacity provided by some large operators is "still way below requirement".

"The POI capacity provided by these operators is still way below requirement and is falling short of the customer addition pace of Jio, resulting in quality of service issues for Indian customers. The resultant call failure rates continue to be of the order of 175 calls failing out of every 1,000 calls from Jio to Airtel network when the QoS regulations mandate that no more than five calls out of every 1,000 calls can fail. Indian customers are still being denied the benefits of superior voice technology on Jio's state-of-the-art network," said the company in a post-result statement.

Replying to the allegation Airtel said, “About 60 million customers of Jio are making calls into the Airtel network. To meet this requirement, we have provided 21,557 PoIs to them which is much higher than their demand of 14,164 E1s for catering to 100 million customers. Approximately 17,000 PoIs of the total POIs provided are dedicated to the outgoing traffic of Jio. Jio has yet to activate all the E1s we have provided to them."(Read More)

RIL plans to invest another Rs. 30,000 crore into Jio Infocomm

Reliance Industries is planning to invest a sum of Rs. 30,000 crore into Reliance Jio Infocomm to further its development and improve its signal strength.

The company in its board meeting held earlier on Friday decided to invest another Rs. 30,000 crore into its telecom unit and sell 600 crore preference shares to raise the amount. These preference shares will be sold through a rights issue and will be nine percent non-cumulative optionally convertible (OCPS) available at Rs. 50 each including a premium of Rs. 40.

RIL had already invested Rs. 1.71 lakh crore while setting up its telecom venture Jio Infocomm. Ever since its launch on September 5, 2016, Jio has amassed more than 70 million users, owing to its free voice calls and data plans. The subscriber addition rate is said to be one of the highest, thereby, raising Rs. 30,000 crore last year and rights issue in two tranches in January and September.

The telecom major, however, has been suffering from lack of network coverage and call drop, which it now looks to overcome with the new investment.(Read More)