Mumbai: The Euro-zone crisis continues to take centre stage after Moody’s cut sovereign ratings of Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches and was the first rating agency to warn that UK’s rating could be at risk, reports Wall Street Journal. Moody’s move follows Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings’ multiple downgrades of EU nations in the past month. Moody’s said in a statement that growing financial risk from Euro area will exacerbate the affected countries’ own challenges.
Overnight though, US markets ended at a seven-month high after the Greek parliament approved an austerity bill to ensure funds needed for the second bailout, reports
MarketWatch. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6%, to 12,874.04, the S&P 500 Index added 0.7%, to 1,351.77 and the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 1%, to 2,931.39, a new 52-week high.
Asian markets were trading on a cautious note following the Moody’s downgrade. Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average and South Korea’s Kospi were trading marginally lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and China’s Shanghai Composite were off 0.3% and 0.2% each.
In India, Jet Airways & Kingfisher Airlines will be in the focus. About 18,000 employees have not received salaries for two months, reports Economic Times. On Monday, Kingfisher Airlines delayed payment of December salaries citing large unanticipated payments while employees of Jet Airways did not get their January salary. Kingfisher airlines has a debt of Rs 7,000 crore while Jet Airways debt stands at Rs 14,000 crore at the end of the September quarter.
Gati is setting up a joint venture with Japan’s Kintetsu World Express, which offers ocean and freight services in 32 countries and it will invest Rs 267.7 crore for a 30% stake, reports Mint.
SAIL will be under the scanner today after it reported a 43% decline in net profit for the December quarter due to rising raw material costs and rupee depreciation. Revenue declined 4.8% year-on-year but the management is optimistic on sales growth for the full fiscal year as demand for metals climbed in the December quarter.
DLF’s much awaited plan to sell its Aman Hotel chain to reduce debt may spill over to the next year, reports Business Standard. After the results, the management said that sale of its non-core assets in the hospitality sector could also take place in 2012-13. The sale of Aman is expected to fetch DLF around Rs 2000 crore which will help reduce its debt of Rs 22,758 crore as of December quarter.
Lastly, Indians are among the largest depositors in banks abroad with an estimated $500 billion (Rs 24.5 lakh crore) of illegal money stashed away in tax havens, reports Economic Times.