News digest: Fortis battle, Jio tariff, Walmart-Flipkart deal, and more

It was unlikely to be smooth sailing for Sunil Munjal of Hero Enterprise and Anand and Mohit Burman of Dabur even after they received the board's recommendation

1. Fortis battle may drag; TPG-Manipal, IHH await shareholder verdict

The takeover saga at Fortis Healthcare is far from over. A day after the Fortis board chose, after a 15-hour long deliberation, the fund infusion offer from the Hero Enterprise-Burman Family Office for the healthcare chain, other bidders in the fray have not laid down their weapons.

The Manipal-TPG combine and Malaysia’s IHH Healthcare expressed their disappointment with the board’s choice, and indicated they would wait for the shareholders’ decision now. Meanwhile, Fortis Director Brian Tempest spoke to the media on Friday, explaining the rationale behind the board’s choice — ‘certainty of the offer and liquidity flowing into the company.’ Read more...

2. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio tariff pulls down shares of telecom companies

Shares of telecom companies fell on Friday, a day after Reliance Jio Infocomm launched a plan targeting post-paid users.

The S&P BSE Telecom index dropped 4.25 per cent, the most in seven months, even as the Sensex rose 0.82 per cent, or 289.52 points, to 35,535.79. Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest telecom operator, fell 6.4 per cent, while Idea Cellular plunged nearly 12 per cent, the most in a decade, on fears that Jio’s new plan will erode revenues and margins.

Jio on Thursday unveiled an unlimited post-paid plan for Rs 199, with attractive rates for international calls. Read more...

3. Mystery surrounds Walmart-Flipkart deal as Masayoshi Son says wait

Masayoshi Son-led SoftBank has kept the $16-billion Walmart-Flipkart deal in suspense and how. Soon after the mega transaction was signed and announced, the indications coming from the Tokyo-headquartered SoftBank, the largest investor in Flipkart, suggest there’s more to the deal. Sources close to the Japanese investor said there was no exit by SoftBank, taking the stakeholders by surprise.

The sequence of events is curious, a source said. Son gave it away in an investor call on Tuesday, a day before the deal announcement, that Bentonville-based Walmart had acquired Flipkart and that SoftBank’s 2017 investment of $2.5 billion in the Bengaluru firm was now worth $4 billion. Walmart announced on Wednesday it was buying 77 per cent in Flipkart for $16 billion. The same day, it informed the Nasdaq, while the top executives addressed analysts from all over the world on the big buy that valued Flipkart at around $21 billion and met employees of the Bengaluru firm in a townhall. Read more...

4. Professional sports coaching for kids is no longer about recreation alone

Rondos on any football ground in India are rare sights. For those wondering, a rondo is a drill that sees a group of players, typically arranged in a circle, trying to keep possession while another player (sometimes two) — termed the “joker” — tries to steal the ball away. You are allowed only one touch on the ball. FC Barcelona is the most famous exponent of this exercise, which has over the years helped them master the art of playing a quite extraordinary brand of passing and eye-catching football. For many of Europe’s elite clubs, no training session is complete without the rondo.

On a sunless, blustery afternoon at Gurugram’s Heritage School, some 6,500 km away from where the great Johan Cruyff first institutionalised it, Aitor Olmo feels the same way: the rondo is a must. Read more...