• It is turning out to be a good quarter for Corporate India in terms of financial performance for quarter ended June’16. Most of the companies have reported an improvement in profits. Among the major companies, Maruti Suzuki reported 23% increase in profits to Rs 1,486 crore aided by sales growth of 12%. Both ACC, Ambuja cement, reported sharp increase of more than 75% in profits. For JSW Steel, the increase was phenomenal at 52 times led by 92% increase in EBITDA. Airtel is among the few large corporate recording decline is profits which fell by 30% even though revenues increased by 8%.
• Within Banking sector, PSBs have largely recorded a decline in profits whereas their private sector counterpart have seen impressive results. Yet, the results are better than that for March’16, when most of them had reported huge losses. PNB reported profits of Rs 306 crore, lower by more than 50% over June’15, yet far better than the loss of more than Rs 5,000 crore in March’16. Yes Bank reports 33% increase in profits.
• Startups continue to go through the phase of churning with the purchase of Jabong, loss making online fashion retailer, by Myntra. Myntra, itself was bought by Flipkart about two years back and has managed to sustain itself. However, whether the acquisition will be value accretive remains a big question for the parent company, Flipkart, which itself is undergoing a painful restructuring exercise and suffered valuation downgrade over last few quarters.   
• In an interesting case of legal tangle, Tata Sons fights to honor its commitment to NTT Docomo, the Japanese telecom company. Tata Sons had agreed to buyback the stake from Docomo at a pre-agreed price, which is much higher than the market price. However, RBI has refused permission to do so as the existing Indian laws prohibit such sale/purchase. As an interim measure, the company has agreed to deposit $ 1.2 bn in Delhi High Court. (More on this, later)
• International – Verizon Communications announced the acquisition of Yahoo!’s core internet business for a consideration of $ 4.8 bn, bringing curtains down on the two decade old company. Yahoo! has been among the pioneers of the internet revolution and its fall, having reached a market capitalization of more than $100 bn, reflects the short life span of web based companies and the vulnerability of their business model.
• Japanese government continues its battle to pop up the economy with release of $ 265 bn stimulus package, nearly 6% of its GDP. The stimulus would certainly come at the cost of increase in its debt/GDP ratio, another battle, the country had been fighting for long now.

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