Issue: 1043
Trump threatens China with
155% tariff from Nov 1 amid trade tensions: US President Donald Trump on
Monday issued a sharp warning to China, saying his administration could impose
tariffs as high as 155 percent on Chinese goods starting November 1 if a trade
deal is not reachedSpeaking at the White House during a meeting with Australian
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Trump said Beijing had been “very respectful”
of Washington despite ongoing trade tensions. “They are paying tremendous
amounts of money to us in the form of tariffs. As you know, they are paying 55
per cent; that’s a lot of money,” he said. Trump said that while many countries
had previously taken advantage of the United States, those days were over. “A
lot of countries took advantage of the US and they are not able to take
advantage anymore. China’s paying 55 per cent and a potential 155 per cent come
November 1st unless we make a deal,” he added.
(Moneycontrol)
RBI sold net $7.7 billion
in August to arrest rupee's fall: The Reserve Bank of India sold
a net of $7.7 billion in the spot foreign exchange market in August, data
released on Monday showed, as the central bank looked to support the Indian
rupee that fell 0.68% in the month. The RBI said in its monthly bulletin that
it did not purchase any dollars and sold $7.7 billion. In July, the central
bank had sold a net of $2.54 billion in the spot market. The Indian rupee fell
0.68% in August to 88.1950 against the US dollar, breaching the 88-per-dollar
mark for the first time. The RBI's net outstanding forward sales stood at
$53.36 billion as of end-August, compared with a net sale of $57.85 billion at
the end of the previous month.
(Business Line)
India pushes to expand
rupee settlement with key trade partners: India’s central bank is taking active steps to
allow free-trade partners to settle transactions with it more easily in the
rupee, a person familiar with the matter said, a move that could help boost the
local currency over time. Initial steps include establishing direct rupee
rates that don’t rely on a third currency, such as the US dollar, for cross-reference,
said the person familiar with the central bank’s thinking, asking not to be
named because the discussions are private. Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank
of India said it will establish reference rates for the UAE’s dirham and
Indonesia’s rupiah, adding to existing links with the US dollar, Japanese yen,
euro, and British pound. RBI is also actively developing reference rates for
its neighbors and Mauritius, the person said.
(Economic Times)
PNB expects $1
billion hit in transition to new credit rules, CEO says: Punjab
National Bank (PNB) will face an estimated 90 billion-rupee ($1.03 billion)
impact as the lender transitions to a central bank-mandated credit loss
framework by 2031, its chief executive said on Monday. The country's
third-largest state-owned lender by market capitalisation is one of the first
to disclose an estimate on the likely effect of the rules, issued by the
Reserve Bank of India earlier this month, to its balance sheet. "The
impact comes to around 90 billion rupees," said Ashok Chandra, PNB's
managing director and CEO in an interview with Reuters. "The bank has done
a rough estimate as this (new credit rules) was already in the pipeline ... I
don't see any further deviation."
(Business Line)
ICICI Bank commits ?625
crore CSR funding to Tata Memorial Centre’s new cancer care facility at Navi
Mumbai: ICICI Bank, along with
Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), on Sunday announced commencement of construction of
a new cancer care building at TMC’s Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research
& Education in Cancer in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. Funded through the
Bank’s CSR contribution of ?625 crore, the facility, which is a 11-storey
building, spanning across an area of 3.4 lakh square feet, will be among
India’s largest radiation therapy centres, equipped with cutting-edge cancer
treatment technologies, ICICI Bank said in a statementThis is part of the
Bank’s larger commitment of ?1,800 crore to TMC for setting up of three
state-of-the-art cancer care buildings; one each at Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra,
Mullanpur (New Chandigarh) in Punjab and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh..
(Business Line)
HDFC Bank doesn't see AI
leading to layoffs: CEO:
The country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank does not see its use of
artificial intelligence leading to any layoffs, a top company official has
said. The lender, which had 2.20 lakh employees as of September, is carrying
out some "lighthouse experiments" in technologies, including
generative AI, which will deliver its advantages in the next 18-24 months, HDFC
Bank Chief Executive and Managing Director Sashidhar Jagdishan said on
Saturday.
(Business Line)
Small finance banks to
scale up gold loan business:
Amid a muted overall credit growth in the banking sector, gold loans have
emerged as the only segment witnessing strong traction. Rising gold prices have
further boosted customer demand. Small finance banks are actively ramping up
efforts to seize the opportunity and scale up gold loan portfolios by adding
branches and deploying more employees on ground. This also marks a shift from
unsecured lending to secured loan books. As per the RBI data, loans
against jewellery grew 117% in August, compared with 40% a year ago. Outstanding
gold loans stood at Rs 62.13 lakh crore as on August 22. As
some small finance banks are facing stress from the microfinance sector,
lenders are trying to diversify portfolios by adding secured products, where
gold loan is an attractive segment.
(Financial Express)
Mutual funds invest nearly
Rs 23,000 crore in IPOs in 2025, large issues dominate: Mutual funds (MFs) have
invested around Rs 22,750 crore in initial public offerings (IPOs) so far in
2025, accounting for nearly 19 percent of the total Rs 1.22 lakh crore raised
from the primary market this year, according to data from Prime Database. Fund
houses deployed Rs 15,158 crore through anchor investments and another Rs 7,590
crore in the Qualified Institutional Buyer (QIB, non-anchor) segment between
January and mid-October. Strong Systmatic Investment Plan (SIP) inflows,
averaging over Rs 20,000 crore per month and overall inflows into funds have
provided ample liquidity for MFs to participate in large offerings, even amid
mixed foreign investor flows. The five largest IPOs of the year ; Tata Capital
(Rs 15,511.9 crore), HDB Financial Services (Rs 12,500 crore), LG Electronics
India (Rs 11,604.7 crore), Hexaware Technologies (Rs 8,750 crore), and Ather
Energy (Rs 2,980.8 crore) -- together accounted for 42 percent of total
proceeds and absorbed nearly 44 percent of MF investments.
(Moneycontrol)
Strong iPhone 17 demand
pushes Apple closer to $4 trillion valuation: Apple shares surged to an all-time high on
Monday, with the iPhone maker close to becoming the third company to hit a $4
trillion market valuation as data showed strong momentum for the latest iPhone.
Data from research firm Counterpoint showed the iPhone 17 series outperformed
its predecessor in early sales in China and the United States, with the newer
models out-selling the iPhone 16 series by 14% during their first 10 days of
availability in the two countries. Apple shares jumped 4.5% to $263.7, giving
it a market capitalization of about $3.91 trillion and making it the second
most valuable company in the world behind AI-chip giant Nvidia.
(Business Line)
Gold and silver outshine
equities as Samvat 2081 draws to a close: Gold and silver extended their red-hot streak
during Samvat 2081, even as equity-market returns moderated. This was in
contrast with the previous Samvat, when almost all asset classes delivered
stellar returns. Gold and silver jumped more than 60 per cent and 68 per cent,
respectively, after rising over 30 per cent in Samvat 2080. The yellow metal
sprinted from ?79,238 per 10 gram to ?1.27 lakh during Samvat 2081, while
silver jumped from ?96,670 to ?1.63 lakh per kg, outrunning every major asset
class. Meanwhile, the benchmark indices took a breather, with the Nifty and
Sensex posting single-digit gains of 6.8 per cent and 5.8 per cent,
respectively.
(Business Standard)
Commercial banks may not need RBI approval for floating
subsidiaries: For commercial banks to float subsidiaries,
approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may not remain mandatory,
according to highly placed sources. However, if the subsidiary is for insurance
or asset management, the bank must take approval from the respective
regulators. The central bank is considering the matter. The move, sources said,
is to make banks’ doing business easier. The regulator has been streamlining
regulations for the financial sector to enhance ease of doing business, and
this move is a step in that direction.
(Business Standard)
Travel, education drag outward remittances under RBI's LRS in
August: India’s
outward remittances under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Liberalised
Remittance Scheme (LRS) declined 17.7 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in August
2025 to $2.6 billion, mainly due to lower international travel and overseas
education spending amid US visa restrictions. According to data released by the
RBI in its August monthly bulletin, outward remittances under the scheme were
$3.21 billion in August 2024. The
LRS scheme, introduced in 2004, allows resident individuals to remit up to
$250,000 per financial year for permissible current or capital account
transactions. Initially, the limit was $25,000 before being gradually revised
upwards. Outflows for international
travel, the largest component under the scheme, dropped 19.6 per cent YoY to
$1.62 billion. Similarly, overseas education outflows declined 23.4 per cent
YoY to $319.17 million, compared to $416.4 million in August 2024.
(Business Standard)
Sebi proposes easing transfer, demat norms for pre-2019
securities: SEBI
has proposed amendments to the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements
(LODR) Regulations, 2015 to facilitate the transfer and dematerialisation of
securities executed before April 1, 2019. The move is aimed at providing relief
to investors who missed earlier deadlines to regularise such holdings and to
simplify the demat process for all security transactions. In a consultation
paper, Sebi said it plans to allow one more opportunity for investors to
re-lodge transfer deeds for physical securities executed before April 1, 2019.
The regulator’s proposal follows recommendations from a panel comprising
registrars and transfer agents (RTAs), listed companies and legal experts,
which reviewed persistent transfer and demat hurdles faced by investors.
(Business Standard)
KONDRATIEV WAVE
·
A
Kondratiev Wave is a long-term economic cycle in commodity prices and other
prices, believed to result from technological innovation, that produces a long
period of prosperity alternating with economic decline.
·
This
theory was founded by Nikolai D. Kondratiev (also spelled
"Kondratieff"), an agricultural economist who noticed agricultural
and industrial commodity prices experienced long-term cycles. Kondratiev
believed that these cycles involved periods of evolution and self-correction.
· Kondratiev’s theory is not generally accepted by economists and can easily be explained as a statistical illusion created by his transformations of the raw data.
RBI KEY RATES
Repo
Rate: 5.50%
SDF:
5.25%
MSF
/Bank Rate: 5.75%
CRR:
3.50%
SLR:
18.00%
FOREX RATES (RBI
REF. RATE)
INR /
1 USD : 87.7861
INR /
1 GBP : 117.8499
INR /
1 EUR : 102.3972
INR
/100 JPY: 58.3000
EQUITY INDEX
Sensex: 84363.37 (+411.18)
NIFTY: 25843.15 (+133.30)
Bnk NIFTY: 58033.20 (+319.85)
Police Commemoration Day: Observed in India
to honor police personnel who have died in the line of duty. October 21 is significant for India as Police
Commemoration Day to honor police personnel who died in a 1959 ambush by Chinese
troops.
Historical events: Internationally,
this date marks the 1943 establishment of the Provisional Government of Free
India by Subhas Chandra Bose, and the 1959 opening of the Guggenheim Museum in
New York. In science, it was the day the modern definition of the meter was
established in 1983, and Thomas Edison created a functional light bulb in 1879.
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