Top headlines: Steel leads in capacity expansion, GCCs bet on Indian talent

Business Standard brings you the top headlines on Monday

Top headlines of the hour:Government reaches out to investors ahead of LIC IPO, Sebi hurdle for govt’s Fund of Funds scheme for small businesses, steel leads in India’s capacity expansion

Govt dials investors ahead of LIC's IPO

The government has reached out to investors to apprise them about Life Insurance Corporation of India’s (LIC’s) growth and prospects as it prepares for the country’s largest initial public offering (IPO).

Preliminary presentations have been made to inform investors on how the organisation is being restructured ahead of the IPO, along with its financials. In the Finance Bill, 2021, the government had proposed a slew of changes to the LIC Act, 1956. The changes include introducing corporate governance provisions in line with the Sebi’s norms and that the exchequer would hold at least 75 per cent in the insurer for five years after the IPO. Read more

With massive investment plans, steel leads India’s capacity expansion

Reliance Industries is not the only company planning massive investments in a new business and other verticals. Several top companies, led by steel majors ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India (AM/NS India), JSW Steel, Tata Steel and Hindalco, are planning to expand capacity in the next few quarters as demand from their customers rises. 

AM/NS India, a joint venture between the world’s leading steel maker ArcelorMittal and Japan’s Nippon Steel, has plans of ramping up capacity to 30 million tonnes (mt) at an investment of Rs 85,000 crore. Read more

Global capability centres bet big on Indian talent 

Global capability centres (GCCs) of Goldman Sachs, NatWest, and Walmart are set to expand in the country and continue to count on Indian talent to drive their global operations as the industry looks set to add almost double the number of units from pre-Covid levels.

Having come a long way from doing mere back-office operations for multinationals, GCCs are growing employment in double digits, and are catering to their parent enterprises to drive the digital transformation, Viswanathan said. Read more

Thyrocare deal: PharmEasy founders aims to make it big in healthcare 

API Holdings, the parent company of online pharmacy PharmEasy, announced last week that it would pick up a 66.1 per cent stake in diagnostics firm Thyrocare for Rs 4,546 crore. It is the first unicorn to acquire a listed company.

Siddharth Shah, Dhaval Shah, Dharmil Sheth, Harsh Parekh, and Hardik Dedhia are now a step closer to their dream of building India’s ‘Amazon’ in the healthcare delivery platform. Read more

Govt's Rs 50K-cr Fund of Funds scheme for small businesses hits Sebi hurdle

The government's Rs 50,000-crore Fund of Funds (FoF) scheme for small businesses has hit a hurdle as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has questioned the existing structure of the scheme. According to the market regulator, it does not comply with the current regulatory framework.

The scheme, announced in May 2020 as a part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package, calls for state-owned National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the scheme and register it with Sebi. The regulator asked the government to review its compliance requirements, a senior government official told Business Standard. Read more