Hindustan Unilever has acquired 19.8% of Nutritionalab

Opening Bell:

SGX Nifty is up by 45.5 points in the early morning trade, indicating a positive opening for Indian stock market.

Asia-Pacific markets climbed as investors shrug off the US Federal Reserve’s commitment to higher interest rates in tackling inflation. The Japanese Nikkei was up by 0.51 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up by 1.7 percent and South Korea’s Kospi is up by 0.45 percent in early morning deals.

The S&P 500 finished higher on Wednesday but below its session peak after volatile trading following the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting, which showed officials laser-focused on controlling inflation even as they agreed to slow their pace of interest rate hikes. The S&P 500 gained 0.75 percent; and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.69 percent respectively.

Stocks News:

?Hindustan Unilever has completed the acquisition of 19.8% shareholding of Nutritionalab, for Rs 70 crore.

?Marico consolidated revenue in Q3FY23 grew in low single digits on a year-on-year basis. As there has been some semblance of stability in key input prices and consumer pricing across key franchises, gross and operating margins are expected to improve both on a sequential and year-on year basis. Company expects a modest growth in operating profit due to lower revenue growth.

?PGIM India Mutual Fund bought 3.07 lakh shares in Somany Ceramics via open market transactions at an average price of Rs 499.03 per share.

?HPCL has forayed into petrochemical business with pre-marketing of ‘HP Durapol’ brand of polymers, which is a pre-cursor to marketing of HPCL Rajasthan Refinery (HRRL) petrochemical products. HRRL sees a 9-MMTPA-capacity grassroot refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Pachpadra in Rajasthan.

?Foreign institutional investors (FII) sold shares worth Rs 2,620.89 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DII) bought shares worth Rs 773.58 crore on January 4, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

Domestic and International Events

• All officials at the Federal Reserve’s December 13-14 policy meeting agreed the US central bank should slow the pace of its aggressive interest rate increases, allowing them to continue increasing the cost of credit to control inflation but in a gradual way meant to limit the risks to economic growth.
• Oil fell by more than $4 a barrel on Wednesday, posting the steepest percentage loss in the first two trading days of any year for over three decades, as investors worried about fuel demand as the global economy slows and Covid-19 cases grow in China.
• US job openings fell less than expected in November as the labor market remains tight, which could see the Federal Reserve boosting interest rates to a higher level than currently anticipated to tame inflation.
• The legal glare India’s leading commodity exchange MCX finds itself under went up by another notch when the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) imposed a penalty on it for attempting to develop a spot trading platform without seeking the prior approval of the market regulator.

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