Category:

Eco/Invest/Demography

Sebi board agrees in principle to ‘controlling shareholders’ concept

The board noted that the investor landscape is now changing, with private equity and institutional investors holding significant shareholding in listed companies. ”In recent years, a number of businesses and new-age companies with diversified shareholding and professional management that are coming into the listed space are non-family owned and/or do not have a distinctly identifiable promoter group,” the board said.

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No work, no food: Pandemic deepens global hunger

The World Food Program sounded the alarm further last week in a joint report with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, warning that “conflict, the economic repercussions of Covid-19 and the climate crisis are expected to drive higher levels of acute food insecurity in 23 hunger hot spots over the next four months,” mostly in Africa but also Central America, Afghanistan and North Korea.

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Downbeat Indian consumers withhold spending amid pandemic, says RBI survey

“The sentiments on overall spending remained unchanged as higher spending on essential items were offset by a drop in non-essential expenditure with consumers expecting further contraction in discretionary expenditure in the year ahead,” the RBI said.

With forecasters warning of a third wave, any new restrictions could spell more bad news for the country, where private consumption makes up some 60% of gross domestic product.

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Tech titans Amazon, Google, Microsoft join US cyber team to fight ransomware

The tech giants are among firms signed on to be part of a Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative intended to combine government and private skills and resources to fight hackers, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“With these extraordinarily capable partners, our initial focus will be on efforts to combat ransomware and developing a planning framework to coordinate incidents affecting cloud service providers,” said CISA director Jen Easterly.

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J&J seeks emergency use nod for COVID-19 vaccine in India

Indian health authorities have so far approved the use of vaccines developed by AstraZeneca,  Bharat Biotech, Russia’s Gamaleya Institute and Moderna.

The government and Moderna are still trying to sort out issues over imports of the vaccine and indemnity, a top executive at Indian drugmaker and Moderna’s local distribution partner Cipla told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

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Government has no plan at present to block any social media platform: MoS IT

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the government receives various grievances from users about hate content on social media platforms and responds to them in an appropriate way.

The government regularly interacts with social media intermediaries on various issues, including issuing advisories to make these intermediaries safe and accountable to users,. he said.

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Amazon-Future-Reliance case: SC holds Emergency Award enforceable in India

Amazon has a 49 percent stake in FCPL, which in turn owns a 9.82 percent stake in FRL. Amazon’s contention is that it has invested Rs.1431 crore in FCPL on the clear understanding that FRL would be the sole vehicle for its retail business and its retail assets would not be alienated without consent and never to a ‘Restricted Person’. FRL, on the other hand, has objected to the enforcement of the EA award saying that it is not an order under Section 17(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act and hence not enforceable in India.

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