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Wednesday, 14 July 2021
Top of the morning

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Good morning!

There is a sharp rise in mobility in some Indian cities. We are going to offices, malls, markets, salons, and liquor stores. If you live in the national capital region, you may even struggle to find parking spots. This isn’t very comforting. The union government has issued another warning—some of us are dismissing warnings about a possible third wave, treating them like weather updates. We ought to take them more seriously to avoid another catastrophe.

File photo: Inside a Delhi metro train.

Sure, many of us have got the jabs. However, data crunched by Mint shows that complacency after getting the first dose of the vaccine may be misguided. Scroll down to our chart of the day. Also, find out what’s brewing at Carlsberg and with Zomato’s sizzling IPO.

Market Watch
What's up?

BSE Sensex

52,769.73 (+0.76%)

NIFTY

15,812.35 (+0.76%)

Dollar/Rupee

₹74.53 (+0.01%)

Gold

₹47885 (+0.23%)

Crude oil

₹5511 (+0.69)

Bitcoin

₹24,20,864 (-3.46%)

*As of 6.30 PM 13 July; MCX, Yahoo Finance

The main stuff

How to make the most of an IPO? Zomato shows us the way

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal

The term ‘successful IPO’ is typically used for an initial public offering of equity shares that lists at a significant premium to its issue price. But if the main idea of the primary markets is to help companies raise money to finance growth, the success of an IPO would depend on whether the firm raised as much capital as it needed at the best possible price. By this measure, the ₹9,375 crore IPO of Zomato Ltd appears to tick all the boxes of success, writes Pallavi Pengonda and Mobis Philipose. Read more.

Zomato raises ₹4,196 cr from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Online food delivery platform Zomato has raised ₹4,196 crore from several prominent institutional investors as part of an anchor book allocation, a day ahead of its public offering. The company informed exchanges that it has allocated 552.17 million equity shares to anchor investors at a price of ₹76 per share, the upper end of its price band. Who are the marquee global investors that participated? Ashwin Ramarathinam reports. Read more.

Directors flag discrepancies at Carlsberg, govt orders inspection

Not everything may be fine with beer maker Carlsberg India Private Ltd. The Indian government has ordered an inspection of the company’s books, based on complaints filed by three of its directors and the exit of an auditor. The directors, in 2019 and 2020, complained about the company’s promotional schemes. Why did the auditor, Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP, quit? Gireesh Chandra Prasad finds out. Read more.

SII to make 300 million doses of Sputnik V jabs annually

Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has signed up its seventh Indian partner to boost the production capacity for its Sputnik V vaccine. The latest pact is with the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine maker. SII is expected to produce more than 300 million doses every year. Trial batches will start in September, reports Leroy Leo. Read more.

Appeals court questions Sebi’s stay on Carlyle deal

A proposed deal—between PNB Housing Finance Ltd and a group of investors led by the global private equity giant Carlyle Group—is getting more interesting by the day. In June, PNB Housing had announced a capital-raising plan that involved preferential allotment of shares and warrants to this investor group. However, India’s market regulator Sebi stayed the deal. The drama took a new turn on Tuesday with an appeals court, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), questioning the stay, Gopika Gopakumar reports. Read more.

The unending despair of DHFL depositors (premium)

DHFL’s fixed deposit scheme used to pay an interest of 7.75-7.8% in 2017. With the mortgage lender rated at a stellar AAA by credit rating agencies, many chose to deposit their savings. The first signs of an impending crisis emerged in early 2019 when a sting operation revealed that DHFL’s promoters had siphoned off nearly ₹31,000 crore of public funds. Depositors, now, have been relying on social media to amplify their grievances, writes Shayan Ghosh. Read more.

CEA indicates a reduction in fuel taxes is unlikely

We are getting increasingly bitter about high fuel prices, but the government is unlikely to cut taxes even with the price of petrol crossing ₹100 per litre mark in many metros. The bigger concern is food inflation and not fuel, Krishnamurthy Subramanian, chief economic adviser to the finance ministry, said. Asit Ranjan Mishra reports on the government’s thinking. Read more.

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Elsewhere…

Global business news from WSJ

France’s Competition Authority fined Google $593 million for allegedly violating orders to negotiate paid deals with news publishers, raising pressure on the company in a global fight over how and whether tech companies should pay for news.

A new production problem has surfaced with Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner, further delaying deliveries of the popular wide-body jets. Boeing expects the newly discovered defect to take at least three weeks to address.

Five dozen Japanese companies collectively kicked in more than $3 billion for the Tokyo Olympics, the largest contribution from host nation businesses ever at the Games. However, their plans are falling flat with the no-spectator rule limiting marketing opportunities.

The recent failure of OPEC and its allies to agree on a plan to ease production cuts in August means oil-market investors face the contradictory worries of both undersupply and oversupply, the International Energy Agency said.

Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford, along with outside scientists, are conducting early-stage research into whether potential modifications of their covid-19 vaccines could reduce or eliminate the risk of rare but serious blood clots associated with the shots.

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News in numbers
$9 billion
The projected advertising spend in India in 2021, a growth of 10.8% after dropping 12.9% in 2020, according to advertising firm Dentsu.
59%
The occupancy rate of hospitals in India in the fourth quarter of 2020-21, up from 37% in the first quarter of the year. Hospitals are expected to report higher revenue and profits growth in 2021-22, according to credit rating agency Icra.
$51.5 billion
China’s trade surplus in June 2021, up from $45.5 billion in May, driven by a steady growth in exports. In June, exports grew 32.2% from the year-ago period.
S$49 billion
The total investments by Temasek, Singapore’s investment firm, in 2020-21, its highest ever. The firm also reported a record net portfolio value of S$381 billion.
762
The latest one day international rating of Mithali Raj, Indian women’s cricket captain. She lost her No.1 ranking in batting to Stafanie Taylor of West Indies who has a rating of 766.
howindialives.com
Chart of the day

Most Indian states where the second covid-19 wave is still strong are also the ones that have clocked greater vaccine coverage than the rest of India, shows data analysed by Tanay Sukumar. Rising infections in Kerala as well as several northeastern states serve as a warning—high vaccination rates must not lead to complacency. A good sign is that these states are testing actively and still have restrained mobility, which may help fight the virus in the coming days.

Lounge Recommends

Vikalp@Prithvi

It’s often hard to get to the work of independent filmmakers such as Shabnam Virmani, Anand Patwardhan, Vandana Menon, Nakul Singh Sawhney and Sohil Vaidya, which is what cinema collective Vikalp: Films for Freedom is trying to fix. For more than 60 weeks, they’ve been screening documentaries and short films by non-mainstream filmmakers for free online. Before the pandemic, the collective had been holding these screenings every month at Prithvi Theatre in Juhu. These have now moved online and are followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. The film details and link are uploaded on Vikalp’s Facebook page and are available to watch for 48 hours. Keep reading.

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What the fact

Eccentric Hughes

Hughes in 1938, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Howard Hughes (1905-1976) was an American business mogul with interests across manufacturing, aviation, film production and real estate. He played a role in transforming Las Vegas from being a city known for mafia to making it more corporate investments worthy. However, Hughes was also famous for his eccentricities. He occupied the penthouse of a Vegas hotel and when asked to move out, he bought the property. And the story goes that in the late 1960s, he bought an entire casino named Silver Slipper so that he could get rid of its neon sign. Apparently, the sign was visible from Hughes’ bedroom across the street. The casino also had a rotating slipper on top of its building—the businessman was concerned about photographers hiding behind the structure.

Contributed by @sidart_misra

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Written and edited by Goutam Das. Produced by Nirmalya Dutta. Send in your feedback to goutam.das@htlive.com or nirmalya.dutta@htdigital.in.

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