SoftBank to invest $1 billion in US venture OneWeb as part of $50 billion pledge

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SoftBank Group Corp has agreed to invest $1 billion in US. satellite venture OneWeb Ltd, marking the first tranche of a $50 billion US. investment the Japanese telecoms and technology company’s founder Masayoshi Son pledged to President-elect Donald Trump.

 

“Earlier this month, I met with President-Elect Trump and shared my commitment to investing and creating jobs in the United States,” Son said in a joint statement with OneWeb. “This is the first step in that commitment.”

The investment is part of a $1.2 billion fundraising by OneWeb, which is seeking to provide affordable internet access to people around the world with satellites.

The remaining $200 million will be funded by its current investors, which include Qualcomm Inc, Airbus Group and Virgin Group. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.

In making his $50 billion pledge in the meeting with Trump, Son said his investment would create 50,000 new jobs, a move the US. President-elect claimed was a direct result of his election win.

The latest investment will come directly from SoftBank, not from a $100 billion tech fund it is launching with Saudi Arabia, even though Son has said that large-scale investments would be made through the tech fund to avoid a further expansion of its debt.

OneWeb, established in 2012 and based in Arlington, Virginia, plans to use the funds to build a plant in Florida to produce low-cost satellites, creating almost 3,000 new jobs in the United States over the next four years.

Son is steering SoftBank, a diverse company that holds stakes in US carrier Sprint, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and other firms, towards cutting-edge tech investments as the telecoms services markets mature. It purchased U.K. chip design firm Arm Holdings for $32 billion this year in Japan’s largest ever overseas deal.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/56068014.cms

RBI relaxes cash withdrawal rule

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now said people depositing money with banks in legal tender (meaning, not in the now-banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes) on or after Tuesday are allowed to withdraw the equivalent amount without any restriction, preferably in high-value denomination.

It said it took this decision on careful consideration, as certain depositors were “hesitating to deposit their monies into bank accounts in view of the current limits on cash withdrawals from accounts”.

This would mean, for instance, that business owners who deposit cash at the end of a day can now go to a bank and withdraw money as they did before demonetisation, to the extent they had deposited in existing legal tender. All business owners, small or big, handle huge cash on a daily basis and typically operate through current accounts on which banks don’t offer any interest rate but put no restriction in withdrawal.

On November 14, the central bank had said banks should maintain a separate record for deposits done in old notes and the valid notes, customer-wise.

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/rbi-relaxes-cash-withdrawal-rule-116112801294_1.html

Demonetisation: Amidst cash chaos Fintech startup Capital Float opens its coffers for small merchants

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Advertisement The fintech startups has partnered with Point of Sale (PoS) card machine vendors to provide merchants quick and easy access to loans. (Reuters)

Amidst cash chaos and consequent surge in digital payment due to government’s demonetisation drive, a Bangalore based digital lending firm for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Capital Float has decided to offer quick and easy loans to small merchants.

The fintech startups has partnered with Point of Sale (PoS) card machine vendors to provide merchants quick and easy access to loans.

Under this offer, any merchant who is using the services of vendors like Mswipe, Petpooja, ICICI Merchant Services, MRL Postnet, Bijlipay and Pine Labs for transations would be eligible for upto 200% finance on sales from their card machines. The merchant would be able to repay the loan as nominal percentage of their daily card settlements.

Capital Float, a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) has a product called ‘Merchant Cash Advance’ which is targeted towards any merchant that accepts cards payment in exchange of the goods and services. The company underwrites such borrowers according to their monthly card sales and offers loans up to twice the amount of their average monthly card sales.

With the increase in card transactions due to demonetisation, company is expecting a surge for its Merchant Cash Advance offering. According to company officials, with the increase in card transactions, now more number of merchants will qualify under the loan criteria and also avail larger loan amounts as compared to the past.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/demonetisation-amidst-cash-chaos-fintech-startup-capital-float-opens-its-coffers-for-small-merchants/458261/

Japan plans world’s fastest supercomputer

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Presently, Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, remains the world’s most powerful computer.

Japan plans to build the world’s fastest-known supercomputer in a bid to arm the country’s manufacturers with a platform for research that could help them develop and improve driverless cars, robotics and medical diagnostics.

The ministry of economy, trade and industry will spend 19.5 billion yen ($173 million) on the previously unreported project, a budget breakdown shows, as part of a government policy to get back Japan’s mojo in the world of technology. The country has lost its edge in many electronic fields amid intensifying competition from South Korea and China, home to the world’s current best-performing machine.

In a move that is expected to vault Japan to the top of the supercomputing heap, its engineers will be tasked with building a machine that can make 130 quadrillion calculations per second—or 130 petaflops in scientific parlance—as early as next year, sources involved in the project told Reuters.

At that speed, Japan’s computer would be ahead of China’s Sunway Taihulight that is capable of 93 petaflops. “As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast,” said Satoshi Sekiguchi, a director general at Japan’s ‎National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where the computer will be built.

The push to return to the vanguard comes at a time of growing nostalgia for the heyday of Japan’s technological prowess, which has dwindled since China overtook it as the world’s second-biggest economy.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for companies, bureaucrats and the political class to work more closely together so Japan can win in robotics, batteries, renewable energy and other new and growing markets.

Deep learning

In the area of supercomputing, Japan’s aim is to use ultra-fast calculations to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence (AI), such as “deep learning” technology that works off algorithms which mimic the human brain’s neural pathways, to help computers perform new tasks and analyze scores of data.

Recent achievements in this area have come from Google’s DeepMind AI program, AlphaGo, which in March beat South Korean professional Lee Seedol in the ancient board game of Go.

Applications include helping companies improve driverless vehicles by allowing them to analyze huge troves of visual traffic data, or it could help factories improve automation. China uses the Sunway Taihulight for weather forecasting, pharmaceutical research, industrial design, among other things.

Japan’s new supercomputer could help tap medical records to develop new services and applications, Sekiguchi said. The supercomputer will be made available for a fee to Japan’s corporations, who now outsource data crunching to foreign firms such as Google and Microsoft, Sekiguchi and others involved in the project said.

The new computer has been dubbed ABCI, an acronym for AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure. Bidding for the project has begun and will close on 8 December. Fujitsu Ltd, the builder of the fastest Japanese supercomputer to date—the Oakforest-PACS, capable of 13.6 petaflops, declined to say if it would bid for the project. The company has, however, said it is keen to be involved in supercomputer development.

Source: http://www.livemint.com/Science/tvHE1Qa3EshJdFSkiqCoxK/Japan-plans-worlds-fastest-supercomputer.html

Philippines fastest-growing economy in developing Asia

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The Philippine economy grew at its fastest pace in three years last quarter, underscoring the nation’s resilience to global risks as investment surged and consumers spent more.

Gross domestic product increased 7.1% from a year earlier, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in Manila on Thursday. The median estimate of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 6.7%.

Compared with the previous quarter, GDP rose 1.2%, in line with economists’ estimates

Undeterred by risks such as Donald Trump’s protectionist ambitions and President Rodrigo Duterte’s rants against the US, the Philippine economy is set to expand more than 6% until 2018 to rank among the fastest-growing in the world, accordng to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Last quarter’s growth exceeded China’s 6.7% and Vietnam’s 6.4% in the same period. India, which posted growth of 7.1% in the second quarter, is yet to publish GDP data for the three months through September.

Gifted with a young population and backed by $50 billion of revenue from remittances and outsourcing, the Philippines is getting an additional boost from Mr Duterte’s $160-billion infrastructure plan aimed at creating jobs. Projects include at least $1 billion of contracts to build an airport and a railway to transform a former US military base into a commercial hub.

Philippine stocks rose a second day, climbing as much as 2.2%. They were up 1.1% as of 1101am in Manila.

The peso was little changed at 49.32 per dollar.

“Philippines will remain an outperformer in the region,” said Rahul Bajoria, a senior economist at Barclays Plc in Singapore. “It is domestically driven, with consumption holding up quite well and the fiscal spending being planned. The global risks we’re seeing including to trade won’t fundamentally alter its prospects.

“In the short term at least, we expect the economy will continue growing at a decent pace,” Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at Capital Economics Ltd in London, said in a note. “The foundations are in place for growth to remain strong, but recent political events, both in the US and domestically, have made the outlook much less certain.”

“Putting money on infrastructure-related stocks is the smart bet and it’s exactly what I am doing,” said John Padilla, who helps manage about $9.1 billion at Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co, the Philippines third-largest money manager. “This growth poses now more challenge for President Duterte to keep the pace. It supports the view that Philippines needs infrastructure to sustain this growth.”

Household spending, which makes up about 70% of GDP, rose 7.3% from a year earlier. Government spending gained 3.1% and investment surged 20%.

Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asean/1137576/philippines-fastest-growing-economy-in-developing-asia

Over 8,100 wilful defaulters owe Rs 76,685 crore to banks

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Public sector banks (PSBs) have reported 16 per cent rise in number of wilful defaulters at 8,167 who collectively owe them Rs 76,685 crore at the end of March 2016.

Public sector banks (PSBs) have reported 16 per cent rise in number of wilful defaulters at 8,167 who collectively owe them Rs 76,685 crore at the end of March 2016.

As against the previous year, there is 16 per cent rise in wilful defaulters owing over Rs 25 lakh each to 8,167 from 7,031 at the end of March 2015. However, dues to the bank have increased to 28.5 per cent to Rs 76,685 crore in 2015-16 from the earlier Rs 59,656 crore.

To recover loans from such defaulters, banks have filed 1,724 FIRs with a total outstanding of Rs 21,509 crore in 2015-16. The conviction rate in all these cases was only 1.14 per cent.

Last fiscal, banks recovery efforts in such cases yielded Rs 3,498 crore.

There were 129 wilful defaulters who borrowed loans in excess of Rs 100 crore amounting to Rs 28,525 crore from PSBs as on June 30, 2016, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

To bring down NPAs, he said, RBI has formulated guidelines for early recognition of financial distress for recovery from borrowers.

“Before a loan account turns NPA, banks are required to identify stress in the account under three sub-categories of Special Mention Account (SMA),” he said.

Banks are required to report credit information on borrowers having aggregate exposure of more than Rs 5 crore to Central Repository of Information of Large Credits (CRILC), he said.

“As soon as an account is reported by any of the lenders to CRILC as SMA-2, Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) is to be mandatorily formed if the aggregate exposure of lenders is more than 100 crore,” he said.

In a separate reply, Gangwar said banks have seized property worth Rs 64,519 crore during 2015-16 as against Rs 54,060 crore in the previous fiscal.

These properties were seized by invoking the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/over-8100-wilful-defaulters-owe-rs-76685-crore-to-banks/449342/

Foreign direct investment jumps 77.5% to $5.15 billion in September

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With the government relaxing FDI policy and taking steps to improve ease of doing business, the Foreign Direct Investment in the country increased by 77.5 percent to USD 5.15 billion in September this year.

In September 2015, the FDI had stood at USD 2.9 billion, according to the data of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

During April-September period of this fiscal, FDI in the country grew by 30 percent to USD 21.62 billion as compared to USD 16.63 billion in the same period last year.

Among the top 10 sectors, services received the maximum FDI of USD 2.29 billion during the first half of this fiscal, followed by telecommunications (USD 2.78 billion), trading (USD 1.48 billion), computer software and hardware (USD 1.03 billion) and automobile (USD 729 million).

During the period, India received the maximum FDI from Mauritius (USD 5.85 billion) followed by Singapore (USD 4.68 billion), Japan (USD 2.79 billion), the Netherlands (USD 1.61 billion) and the US (USD 1.43 billion).

During financial year 2015-16, foreign fund inflows grew at 29 percent to USD 40 billion as against USD 30.93 billion in 2014-15.

The government relaxed FDI norms in various sectors, including defence and civil aviation to boost FDI in the country.

Foreign investments are considered crucial for India, which needs around USD 1 trillion to overhaul its infrastructure sector such as ports, airports and highways to boost growth.

Growth in foreign investments helps improve the country’s balance of payments (BoP) situation and strengthen the rupee.

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/business/foreign-direct-investment-jumps-77-5-to-5-15-billion-in-september-3101162.html