Top 10 business headlines: RIL buys Hamleys, Mindtree deal, and more

From HCL Tech taking over Wipro to Jet Airways, Business Standard brings you top stories that made news on Thursday

Slowdown in equity flows amid election result uncertainty hits MF industry

The Rs 24-trillion mutual fund (MF) industry, grappling with the issue of debt exposure, has been hit hard by a sharp slowdown in equity inflows. In April, the inflows into equity schemes, including tax-saving ones, dropped 60 per cent compared to the previous month to Rs 4,608 crore, the lowest since September 2016. Read more here

Reliance Industries buys British toy retailer Hamleys for about Rs 620 cr

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) will acquire British toy retailer Hamleys for a cash consideration of £67.96 million (about Rs 620 crore), the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“Reliance Brands, a subsidiary of RIL, and C. banner International Holdings, a Hong-Kong listed company, today signed a definitive agreement for Reliance Brands to acquire 100 per cent shares of Hamleys Global Holdings, the owner of the Hamleys brand, from C. banner International,” the company said in its statement to the BSE. Read more here

SC asks govt to consider taking over Unitech, complete unfinished projects

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the government to study the possibility of taking over beleaguered realty firm Unitech Ltd and completing its pending projects to protect the interest of the homebuyers, noting that the court lacked expertise in finance or real estate. Read more here

HCL Tech overtakes Wipro to become third-largest IT services firm in India

HCL Technologies (HCLT) on Thursday surpassed Wipro to become the third-largest IT services firm in India in 2018-19, making the first change in the pecking order of the country’s $170-billion IT outsourcing industry in the last seven years.

The Noida-based IT services firm announced its revenues touched $8.63 billion in the last financial year, a rise of 10 per cent over the previous financial year. Read more here

IBM takes to AI-led cognitive solutions for hiring, retaining employees

The era of intuition and gut feeling of the human resources (HR) manager in selecting candidates seems to be coming to an end.

Now, artificial intelligence-led cognitive solutions have started helping enterprises not only to recruit employees but even to retain them by predicting possible attrition beforehand. Read more here

L&T reaches open offer trigger point, raises stake in Mindtree to 25.93%

L&T reached the open offer trigger point by increasing its total holding in Mindtree to 25.93 per cent on Thursday. It is on the verge of reaching the critical 26 per cent-level, which will ensure it a board seat in the firm.

According to bulk deal data available with the NSE, L&T on Thursday bought over 3.30 million shares (2.01 per cent of Mindtree’s total share base), at an average price of Rs 980. Read more here

UK firm offers bid for grounded Jet Airways, keen to partner Etihad

London-based investment firm Adi Partners on Wednesday formally placed its bid for the cash-starved Jet Airways, a day before the bid deadline ends.

The company, which is led by Sanjay Viswanathan, former chief executive officer of Bangalore-based mid-cap information technology (IT) firm Sonata Software, said it was willing to tie up with Abu-Dhabi-based Etihad Airways for the bid. Read more here

Transfer pricing: Advance pricing pact vs safe harbour provision

Transfer pricing (TP) provisions are aimed at ensuring that transactions entered into between related parties are carried out on arm’s length basis. Globally, TP has helped governments to address concerns of base erosion and profit shifting and also in keeping a check on possible tax leakages in cross border intra-group transactions, the Livemint reported.

Car dealers on taxman’s radar over discounts & freebies to customers

The indirect tax department is scrutinising discounts and freebies offered to customers by major car dealers across the country on suspicion that they may have availed input tax credit on those freebies without paying GST, leading to revenue leakage for the exchequer, according to Economic Times.

Alphonso fights bitter battle against Karnataka mangoes in Maharashtra

The Alphonso mangoes grown in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, among the few Indian farm products to enjoy a Geographic Indicators (GI) tag, is fighting an uphill battle in the wholesale and retail markets. Similar looking mangoes sourced from Karnataka have flooded the market, and are being mislabelled and sold as Alphonso mangoes, the Hindu Businessline reports.