HDFC to raise ₹57K crore, Paytm to get revenue boost, ABSL Capital exits insurance broking business.

Opening Bell:

SGX Nifty is up by 61.5 points in the early morning trade, indicating a positive opening for Indian stock market.

Asian markets traded mostly in the green in the early hours of March 28 with Straits Times up 0.5 percent, Kospi and Nikkei trading flat. The Japanese Nikkei is up by 0.17 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up by 0.11 percent and South Korea’s Kospi is up by 0.47 percent in early morning deals.

The S&P 500 ended slightly higher on Monday as a deal for Silicon Valley Bank’s assets helped to boost bank shares, while a decline in technology-related stocks limited the day’s gains. The S&P 500 gained 0.16 percent and Nasdaq Composite declined by 0.47 percent, respectively.

Stocks News:

?On March 24, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) released wallet interoperability guidelines, allowing Paytm Payments Bank to earn 1.1% interchange revenue when Paytm Wallet customers make payments on merchants acquired by other payment aggregators or banks. Additionally, Paytm Payments Bank will pay 15 basis points (bps) of charges for adding more than Rs 2,000 using UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and will also earn 15 bps when other wallets use the bank to add more than Rs 2,000 using UPI. Paytm Payments Bank is also in the process of acquiring UPI payment merchants.

?Ahead of the merger with HDFC Bank, the board of mortgage lending major Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) has approved plans to raise another Rs 57,000 crore through the issue of Non-convertible Debentures (NCD).

?Financial Services firm Aditya Birla Capital has decided to exit the insurance broking business by selling its entire stake in Aditya Birla Insurance Brokers Limited (ABIBL) to Edme Services for an undisclosed amount.

?Adani Enterprises informed the exchanges that its arm AMG Media Networks Ltd has completed the acquisition of 49% equity stake in Quintillion Business Media.

?Foreign institutional investors (FII) sold shares worth Rs 890.64 crore, whereas domestic institutional investors (DII) purchased shares worth Rs 1,808.94 crore on March 27, National Stock Exchange’s provisional data showed.

Domestic and International Events

• The global economy faces the prospect of a “lost decade” on account of nearly all drivers of economic progress in recent history fading, the World Bank has said.
• The market participants will be following the final US growth numbers for the final quarter of the previous calendar year scheduled to be released on March 30.
• S&P Global Ratings on Monday kept its forecast for India’s economic growth unchanged at 6 percent in the fiscal year starting April 1, before rising to 6.9 percent in the following year.
• Crude prices moved in a narrow range in early Asian trade on Tuesday after rallying in the previous session, with oil markets focused on developments in the banking crisis as well as on supply concerns and indications of strengthening demand.

Key Equity Indices