News digest: Five banks face PCA, Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill and more

Five PSBs on brink of being put under RBI's prompt corrective action plan

Five public sector banks (PSBs), including Canara and Union Bank of India, are on the brink of being put under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) prompt corrective action (PCA) plan. According to rating agency Icra, their net non-performing assets (NPAs) rose above 6 per cent in December 2017. Read More...

Insolvency process: ArcelorMittal's bid for Essar Steel illegal, says VTB

ArcelorMittal is “spoiling” the bidding game of Essar Steel. Despite its lobbying with the Indian government, its “illegal bid” should not be cleared as it does not meet the eligibility criteria as per the current Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), said VTB Capital, one of the two bidders for Essar Steel. ArcelorMittal is the other bidder. Read More...

Funding pace picks up for start-ups, but no complete turnaround yet

In the last few weeks, several start-ups raised money: Zomato, Swiggy, BigBasket, and Zoomcar were among the prominent names. Has the funding cycle turned for start-ups? The big deals may suggest so, but they don’t reflect the full story. Read More...

Will Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill catch the next Nirav modi?

Vijay  Mallya reportedly left Indian shores on March 2, 2016. It has taken the government two years to expedite the introduction of a law to deter economic offenders from fleeing the country. A sense of déjà vu prevailed in the Punjab National Bank fraud case, involving diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. The proposed Fugitive Economic Offenders (FEO) Bill, 2018, seeks to empower the government to confiscate the property of proclaimed economic offenders who have fled the country. However, experts expect several legal challenges in its implementation that may nullify the deterrence caused by the threat of forfeiture for economic offenders leaving the country. Read More... 

How Yogi treads the fine line between populism and reform 

Yogi Adityanath — who completes his first year as the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister on March 19 — has spent the last 12 months sizing up his potential challengers, consolidating and expanding his turf, balancing Hindutva and caste interests, homing in on governance, and scouring the state’s polarised bureaucracy and police to build a team of loyalists to administer through them. Read More...