SBI to issue $2bn fundraising, Star Health Insurance reports healthy numbers, Vedanta to issue NCDs

Opening Bell:

SGX Nifty is up by 34.5 points in the early morning trade, indicating a positive opening for Indian stock market.

Stocks in the Asia-Pacific rose on Tuesday as the Bank of Korea held interest rates at 3.5 percent, in line with expectations. The Japanese Nikkei is up by 1.4 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up by 1 percent and South Korea’s Kospi is up by 1.03 percent in early morning deals.

U.S. stock indexes clawed back from steep losses to a mixed close on Monday as investors digested Friday’s employment report and prepared for an eventful week of inflation data and bank earnings. S&P 500 was up 0.10 percent whereas Nasdaq 100 lost 0.09 percent respectively.

Stocks News:

?Bank of Baroda, a public sector lender, reported healthy advances growth for the March quarter, showing a nearly 19% increase over the same period in the previous year.

?State Bank of India’s board is set to meet on April 18 to decide on long-term fund raising, which may be done in single or multiple tranches of up to $2 billion. The fund raising is expected to be done through a public offer and/or private placement of senior unsecured notes

?Vedanta is going to consider issuance of NCDs (non-convertible debentures) on a private placement basis on April 13. In addition, the Supreme Court has permitted Vedanta to carry out the activities at copper smelter plant at Thoothukodi, Chennai, after considering the report of the High Powered Expert Committee and recommendations of the state.

?Star Health and Allied Insurance has recorded a gross direct premium at Rs 12,950.9 crore for the period ended March 2023, a 13% growth over same period last year as per provisional data. The gross direct premium in health-retail segment at Rs 11,947.5 crore grew by 18%, but health-group segment registered a 31% decline in gross direct premium at Rs 807.5 crore in the same period.

?Foreign institutional investors (FII) bought shares worth Rs 882.52 crore, whereas domestic institutional investors (DII) bought shares worth Rs 351.50 crore on April 10, National Stock Exchange’s provisional data showed.

Domestic and International Events

• Oil prices edged higher on Tuesday as market participants weighed supply cuts from OPEC+ that would tighten the global market against concerns about further interest rate hikes potentially hurting demand.
• The Federal Reserve may not need to raise interest rates further to fight inflation, as the fallout from last month’s turmoil in the banking sector and a series of recent labor data point to a slowing US economy, a BlackRock executive said on Monday.
• The stance of the policy continues to favour “withdrawal of accommodation”, clearly implying that the RBI will be back on a rate hiking track if there are any nasty surprises to the anticipated softening trend of Headline CPI.
• Rate hike expectations boosted the US dollar index on Monday and Tuesday, which weighed on oil prices as dollar strength makes oil more expensive for other currency holders.

Key Equity Indices