Top headlines: Future to discuss merger plan, Facebook summoned, and more

From Airtel readying to take on Jio to Kerala govt and Centre on collision course over privatisation of airport, here are the top headlines this morning

Future Enterprises board likely to discuss merger plan on Saturday

The board of Future Enterprises Ltd (FEL) is likely to discuss on Saturday the proposal to merge other listed group entities, such as Future Lifestyle, Future Retail, and Future Supply Chain Solutions, with itself. Once the process is complete, Reliance Industries (RIL) will be investing Rs 8,500 crore in the merged entity by way of additional capital, resulting in the Mukesh Ambani-led conglomerate owning close to 50 per cent in it, said a source close to the deal. Read More

Bharti Airtel gets ready to take on Reliance Jio in 5G vRAN space

Bharti Airtel is set to take on Reliance Jio in its quest to build its own 5G virtualised radio access open network (vRAN) in India. The Sunil Mittal-run company, which is working with the United States-based Altiostar, plans to test the latter’s open RAN software architecture once trial spectrum is made available by the government to the company. Read More
 

Life sciences is the next logical area for India: Blackstone CEO

Co-founder, CEO and chairman of the world’s largest private equity firm Blackstone Stephen A Schwarzman, as the guest of honour at IIT Bombay convocation, will address the graduating class over Zoom on Sunday. Having invested $6 billion in India last year, New York-headquartered Blackstone is looking at the next big growth area in the country. Schwarzman, who had visited India just before the lockdown in March to promote his book What It Takes: Lessons In the Pursuit of Excellence, spoke to Pavan Lall in a video chat about the future of commercial realty in India. Read More

Kerala govt, Centre on collision course over privatisation of airport

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written a letter to the Prime Minister, objecting to the Centre’s “unilateral” decision regarding privatisation of Thiruvananthapuram airport. The state government has said that its proposal to match the offer made by the highest bidder — the Adani group — for Thiruvananthapuram airport was not allowed by the Centre, and therefore the people would oppose the move. Read More

Parliament panel summons Facebook on Sept 2 as hate speech debate grows

The parliamentary standing committee on Information Technology has summoned Facebook on September 2 to discuss the issue of alleged misuse of social media platforms in the wake of claims that the US firm did not apply hate speech rules to certain BJP politicians. A day before, the panel will also discuss the issue of internet shutdowns. Read More

Reliance Home Fin resolution may be delayed as auditors split on fraud call

In a bizarre turn of events, the forensic audit conducted for State Bank of India (SBI) on Reliance Home Finance by audit firm M K Aggarwal and Co has given the Anil Ambani firm a clean chit, however, another forensic report by Grant Thornton prepared for Bank of Baroda for the same account has classified the company as fraud. Though the Delhi High Court (HC) has stayed classifying the account as fraud until next hearing, this turn of events will impact the debt resolution of Reliance Home Finance, said bankers. Read More

Extreme economic uncertainty but worst could be over, says outgoing MPC

The final policy review by the incumbent monetary policy committee (MPC) showed rare unanimity among members, who voted for a pause and adopting a ‘wait and watch’ strategy. This was on the back of a gradual pick-up in economic activity even as inflation remained above the upper limit of the mandated 6 per cent in the last six months. Read More

Microsoft's Internet Explorer bows out, but browser wars aren't over yet

There was just a small ripple across the technosphere when Microsoft (MS) announced it would retire its Internet Explorer (IE) browser, shutting down all support by August 2021. MS also stated that the IE successor, the MS Edge browser, would move completely onto Google’s open-source Chromium platform. Read More